Fujitsu has provided data centre outsourcing services to the RTA since 1997. The new contract, which takes effect from July 2005, will see Fujitsu continue to host approximately 800 corporate applications for the RTA from two data centres in Sydney. These include the DRIVES information management system, which deals with vehicle licensing and registration, the Integrated Management System for RTA business operations, the Property Information and Management System and the Road Information Systems.
RTA CIO Greg Carvouni told ZDNet Australia that Fujitsu "will actually manage application recovery. They will do all the things that you would normally do in a data centre, including contacting third parties and support organisations that provide software. It's a full range of managed services. We have a separate company to do our network management, but the person who sits at the application layer at the data centre, has overall control of fault resolution. So that means our own staff are not there 24x7."
In addition, Fujitsu will take overall responsibility for managing the RTA's technology environment, ranging from the data centres to the organisation's network and registry office operations. This environment includes approximately 5,000 desktop computers in 220 locations, from major offices to road construction sites.
Fujitsu claims that it has achieved high levels of customer satisfaction in the existing contract, as well as regularly reaching 100 percent system uptime. And it appears that the RTA agrees, with Carvouni saying the deal will "ensure that our IT systems continue to operate at the very high levels of reliability necessary to help manage the safe and efficient use of the road transport network."
Carvouni said: "We were previously with Fujitsu for seven years. During that period, we've obviously learnt a lot ... with the new contract, we've taken the opportunity to broaden and deepen some of the Service Level Agreements that go with it. They're [Fujitsu] on a very tight response time. Some of the systems have half an hour recovery, 24x7."
"We're also taking far more measurements now," said Carvouni, "and not only about whether the application is up or down but also what its response time is, how many of the user population or the sites can get access, and how many functions are available. So it's a much richer set of parameters we're monitoring, and that they're [Fujitsi] responsible for providing."
As part of the deal with Fujitsu, Carvouni said the RTA will be moving to Global Switch's data centre in Ultimo. The organisation will also deploy e6800 Sun enterprise servers. A contract which the RTA signed with Sun Microsystems in July 2004 is also proceeding, with the RTA's rollout of a new Sun mail environment across 1500 staff having been due to happen in the first quarter of 2005. Carvouni said the rollout is on track and in the final acceptance step. The final rollout will happen in March or April.
Greg Carvouni through his rose coloured gl****ed and the frosted windows would never see the frustion of his staff trying to make the existing contract workable. Outsourcing is always an easy option for a CIO, reducing staff and being able to keep your responsiblities at arms length is always the sign of a true leader!