BAE Systems slashes IT costs by 20 per cent

Move to a private cloud reduces costs and speeds up provisioning

Cloud services means reduced cost of IT assets for BAE

Defence company BAE Systems has seen a 20 per cent reduction in total cost of ownership of IT assets, and a 90 per cent reduction in its provisioning cycle as a result of setting up a private cloud, according to its chief IT strategist, Charles Newhouse.

Talking to delegates at the Forrester IT Forum EMEA today, Newhouse explained that just three years ago the company had contract service level agreements with hundreds of supply chain providers and was using just 10 per cent of its infrastructure capacity.

It now has one IT services partner, CSC, which manages cloud services for the business.

The move towards a private cloud was made possible after BAE was forced to replace 200 servers in 2008 following an extended period of " sweating its assets". This allowed the company to move to virtualisation using technology from VMware. The virtual servers are managed via CSC's Virtual Midrange Application Service (VMAS).

The company chose a private as opposed to public cloud because of the sensitive nature of its work and residual security concerns around public cloud services.

Following the move to virtualisation, BAE rebranded its IT department as a cloud services provider, according to Newhouse.

“We began seeing our infrastructure as a commodity service and not a strategic asset,” said Newhouse.

He said that one of the biggest problems the company faced in the move was cultural. The IT team were used to buying assets for use within the business but this model no longer exists. One senior member of staff described the move as “professional emasculation”.

Staff wanting to access BAE's cloud services are first presented with a workflow engine that works like a wizard and determines an employee’s specific IT requirements on joining or moving within the company.

They are then presented with a "my IT services" homepage, which offers a list of IT services grouped by families (network, email, mobile etc). Staff can click into these and are told what’s included, what to expect, how they are charged, how they can order, and how they can reduce their department’s costs – where appropriate.

Each department receives a monthly credit card type statement for each of the services it consumes.

This set-up enables demand management, where employees of BAE can hand back their assets when they are no longer needed.