Formed in late 2001 through the merger of British Regional Airlines, British Airways Regional, Brymon, and Manx Airlines, BA CitiExpress is the largest regional airline in Europe. The organization turned to Salt Lake City, Utah-based Novell’s NetWare operating system and GroupWise collaboration software as the first phase in its project to implement a technology infrastructure giving staff access to email and applications wherever their location.

A project of this size would be a major undertaking at any time, but according to Gavin Megnauth, head of IT for BA CitiExpress, the timing of the merger gave the project some additional problems. Taking four airlines and trying to get a single topology was very difficult and this was further compounded in that the merger happened just before September 11, so we were very, very cash strapped, he said.

Cost was therefore a major consideration in the deal, although other considerations came into play. BA has traditionally been a user of Lotus Notes and Windows NT, while Manx was a Novell house with GroupWise and NetWare.

The exit and entrance costs were quite significant to rip and replace, and we had to look at ‘can we live on two platforms?’ Megnauth said. In a perfect world you’d want everyone in any organization on a single platform, but in an environment where cash is king we’ve been able to see that the TCO of Novell was significantly lower than Lotus and it was worth keeping and expanding that.

Cost considerations were also a key to Microsoft’s Exchange losing out as a potential candidate, said Megnauth, as the hardware and software costs were considered too high, while Lotus also lost points to GroupWise for its lack of flexibility. Lotus doesn’t lend itself to mobile users at the moment, he said. It just isn’t as flexible as GroupWise.

The company’s evaluation of potential solutions involved benchmarking reports from Gartner Group Inc as well as BA’s own internal assessment of costs and business benefits. Because we’d acquired these airlines we were able to come up with measures of bandwidth, cost, complexity and speed and weigh up the metrics that were important to us, said Megnauth.

According to Megnauth 650 people are using the Novell software at the moment, with the technology being rolled out to air crew to enable them to be connected to email and corporate data wherever they may be, rather than having to wait until they return to base. We’ve now IT-enabled over 50% of staff who didn’t have the capability before, he said.

With the initial implementation of NetWare 5.5 and GroupWise 5.5 in place, BA CitiExpress is now looking to increase its investment in Novell with upgrades to version 6 of both products and a project to implement eDirectory to integrate its estimated 40 different systems containing staff data and integrate the management of user identities, access privileges and network resources.

Another potential benefit of going to Novell, according to Megnauth, is its involvement with a number of BA’s OneWorld partners, including Cathay Pacific, American Airlines and Aer Lingus. The company is now looking for Novell to take a lead to suggest methods through which BA can use its software to strengthen its relationships with those partners, said Megnauth. In an era where IT is increasingly more of a commodity and is being scrutinized more than ever, looking for an alliance IT solution is something that we have to think about, he added.

In the meantime, while BA as a whole continues to maintain relationships with Microsoft and Lotus the success of the Novell project has opened the company’s eyes to alternative solutions, said Megnauth. BA took a policy decision some time ago that Novell wasn’t part of its IT infrastructure, he said. This has forced us to look outside and the interest from other part of the business in BA has increased.

Source: Computerwire