London City Airport switches services supplier in bid to cut costs

Five-year contract covers desktop and datacentre management

London City Airport plans to migrate from XP to Windows 7

London City Airport (LCA) has signed a five-year desktop and datacentre services contract with systems integrator SCC that it estimates will cut costs by 10 per cent compared with a previous arrangement with a different supplier.

The managed desktop PC and datacentre services contract covers standardised ITIL support, as well as maintenance and management of the PC infrastructure, including refreshes, upgrades and a scheduled migration from Windows XP to Windows 7.

SCC will also handle application support, covering Sharepoint and Exchange.

“We have achieved built-in, annual cost savings of more than 10 per cent as well as a much improved service,” said LCA IT director Jason Bamforth.

Feedback so far has been "exceptional", Bamforth added, with better reporting and monitoring of the server and network alerting IT staff to problems before end-users notice.

LCA is owned by Global Infrastructure Partners, which last week agreed a £1.5bn deal to buy Gatwick Airport. It is also engaged in a long-term project to improve the reliability, security and cost efficiency of its IT infrastructure.

Other recent upgrades have included re-cabling its data network to support redundancy and disaster recovery.

SCC has conducted a hardware and software audit, and built a web portal to help LCA with new equipment purchases and product lifecycle management.