An interesting contract win for IBM. It has been selected by the MoD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO – previously Defence Estates) to help it gain greater insight and intelligence in relation to its property portfolio. DIO will use IBM’s smarter buildings software and services to reduce building operating costs and find ways to better utilise its existing real estate. We understand that IBM will collect and process data from the lower level systems such as those associated with the National Housing Prime (NHP) contract let in 2011. We know that Steria already holds a contract to provide a housing management system to DIO for the management of the housing estate; it may well be that an interface will be required between the Steria and IBM systems.
All parts of the MoD are under significant pressure to better utilise their assets and IBM is in a good position to offer the data analytics tools and capabilities to help them get a better picture. It is interesting to watch SITS suppliers position themselves within the UK defence market as the MoD transitions to the next phase of delivery of information systems and services under the Defence Core Network Services (DCNS) programme. After the selection of Atlas (led by HP) for the current core Defence Information Infrastructure (DII(F)) programme, suppliers that were left out in the cold (or left with small subcontractor roles) had to focus on delivering complex software development and integration projects in order to maintain a presence. As DII(F) and other core contracts are restructured the infrastructure and applications supplier landscape within UK defence has the potential to be severely disrupted over the next few years. We’ll have more in the impact in our forthcoming PublicSectorViews report on UK defence SITS market trends.