Boeing has revealed details of its £800 million project to overhaul the Ministry of Defence’s logistics IT systems.
The defense giant has named seven subcontractors for the Logistics Network Enabled Capability (LNEC), an eleven year project to unify the MoD’s disparate supply chain information system. They are as follows:
- Ark Continuity will lease and provide managed service of two data centres
- BearingPoint will support the data warehouse as a managed service
- EMC will provide IT hardware and software, and manage the implementation of the data centre storage and backup solution
- Hewlett-Packard will provide hardware and services including for legacy hardware; implementation and support for the service desk management tool; other hardware; and management of some of the legacy Land applications
- IBM UK will provide IT services, hardware, and software, as well as management of information exchange services and engineering and asset management system for the air environment
- Miro Technologies will provide software and consulting; development, implementation, and sustainment of the base inventory management systems project; and management of an engineering and asset-management application
- Steria will provide IT services and software, and manage the service for some of the legacy applications.
In March of this year, the UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) published an in depth report into the failings of the Ministry’s supply chain IT system. It found that armed forces on the front line were often left without necessary equipments thanks to thanks in part to logistics IT systems that were poorly integrated and, in some cases, over 30 years old.
The report found that the organisation’s business intelligence system, based on IBM Cognos and a self-built enterprise data warehouse, was undermined by the quality of that data.
The £800 million contract was announced just after the UK government announced a plan to "publish guidance that ICT projects should not exceed £100 million in value".
