BMW accelerates towards on-demand

BMW has decided to move its email system to an on-demand infrastructure, following a trial earlier this year.

The multimillion-euro deal, to be signed with an as yet unnamed IT supplier, will allow the car manufacturer to update the ageing email and calendar architecture used by its 60,000 staff worldwide to the latest Microsoft environment.

"We are preparing the first pilot and looking forward to the rollout next year," said BMW chief information officer Jurgen Maidl.

The company plans to have moved its decade-old email architecture to a pay-as-you-use Microsoft Exchange/Outlook environment by mid-2005.

"With the new system, we only pay for what we use, which gives us a lot of flexibility," said Maidl.

"If we connect users, we pay for them, and if we disconnect users, we stop paying for them."

The deal also allows BMW to adjust its mailbox sizes, dynamically choosing from various size ranges and paying accordingly.

Earlier this year BMW ran a storage-on-demand pilot project with HP, which allowed it to scale its storage requirements easily to its needs, paying only for what it used.

Maidl says the Microsoft environment was the best fit for BMW's existing architecture, providing good connectivity for mobile users and integrating well with the Office suite.

"We have a lot of PDA-level management tools used by our staff in plants and assembly environments," he said. "Microsoft provides us with smooth connectivity."

The email rollout will begin in the first quarter of 2004, followed by the introduction of the new calendar system in a global 'big bang' operation in early 2005.

BMW currently runs HP's OpenMail with a Netscape client and a proprietary calendar.

"This is early stuff, but it was on top of the heap when we decided in 1994 to use it," said Maidl.

The rollout, maintenance and operation of the environment will be managed by BMW's IT partner, with whom it has agreed a memorandum of understanding but is not yet able to name.