Under the terms of the initial five-year contract, CSC will provide services including server management, data center hosting, storage area network management and disaster recovery planning, as well as supporting Network Rail’s Oracle ERP applications. Some 70 Network Rail IT support employees will transfer over to CSC as part of the deal.
The transition to CSC is set to begin in October and continue for six months. According to a statement from Network Rail, the project will also involve some 4m pounds ($8m) of investment in infrastructure.
In August 2005, French IT services provider Atos Origin signed an agreement with Network Rail worth 48m pounds ($96m) over five years to operate the train management and planning systems used to compile UK rail timetables and monitor the location of trains. The deal also stipulated that Atos would manage Network Rail’s server infrastructure and provide intrusion detection and disaster recovery services.
CSC said that, of the 70 Network Rail staff set to transfer to CSC, some would be employees from previous contract incumbents. However, the company gave no further details and did not name the previous incumbent in question.
Network Rail has also awarded hardware reseller and infrastructure services provider SCC a five-year contract to maintain its distributed computing and provide desktop support, starting from October 1.
