The move follows an announcement in March that Ansett's administrators planned to sell off all IT infrastructure, except for crucial systems which were needed to wind down the failed airline.
Stephane Howarth, a consultant for Ernst & Young who is the administrator representative of information technology for Ansett Australia, said it had been going through the process of downsizing the corporate network.
Howarth said that as the administrator's sold off buildings, terminals and businesses which had been part of Ansett Australia, the IT infrastructure had needed to be separated because Ansett had previously operated with all their systems integrated together.
According to Howarth, it had also had to vacate the data centre and remove all the servers and equipment from the site. "We've rehosted our mainframe applications with Hitachi Data Systems," she said. "We've also rehosted our SAP Unix with them."
Similarly, the network of the defunct airline has also had to be downsized. Previously it had supported more than 10,000 staff, said Howarth. Now with about 500 remaining staff and administrators in only three locations there wasn't the need for such a large network.
Howarth said that most leased equipment had been returned to the lessors, which were mainly IBM and HP. It has also installed smaller cabling, which was cheaper to run, she said.
"[We've] only keep what was critical for the remaining administration and engineering and maintenance," Howarth explained. "So we've had to keep systems to support their operation."
She said that one of the most difficult tasks was to sort through applications and various hardware that Ansett had in place and try and only keep what was critical for its operation.
Howarth admits that in some ways removing parts of the network can be more complicated than just adding new hardware and systems. "It's very difficult when you've got a lot systems and only want to keep a couple, because [they are] integrated and interfacing to each other," she said. "Here we had to actually kill things off to cut costs."
"[Now] it's a question of maintaining the system we currently have until we finish the administration," Howarth said.
"Everything was focused on cutting costs--we had to shrink the operation so IT costs were as small as possible."
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