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Building for the future

Balfour Beatty has enlisted Fujitsu to transform its IT infrastructure.

The new partnership signals a move by the organisation to invest in technology to support its wider business strategy of improved efficiency, customer centricity and  growth – and will enable the business and its customers to operate in a much more informed, flexible and agile way. The project with Fujitsu is fundamental in creating a standardised IT infrastructure for Balfour Beatty’s UK business, while driving down IT costs.

A global organisation, operating in over 80 countries, Balfour Beatty brings together designers and planners, engineers, builders, project and facilities managers, analysts, consultants across a multitude of locations. As a result of a reorganisation of its UK business, combined with significant growth in recent years, Balfour Beatty was faced with disparate and fragmented systems.

It recognised the need to provide a more joined-up and improved service to its customers and that IT would be an enabler to achieving this. Balfour Beatty looked for a partner with a proven track record in delivering projects of a similar scale. Fujitsu was selected as supplier of choice following a rigorous tender process.

Under the terms of the multi-million pound, five year contract, Fujitsu will host and manage the company’s data in a shared storage environment, using a combination of physical and cloud based virtual data centres. It will also provide desktop services and support for 14,000 users in the UK, across approximately 450 permanent locations and 450 temporary sites – supported by Fujitsu hardware. This move will see Balfour Beatty’s employees use standardised equipment and also enjoy a much smoother user experience for support, with much faster response times.

Balfour Beatty’s complex and diverse IT estate currently comprises over 1500 servers in the UK, spread across 10 data rooms. The consolidation and rationalisation of this estate into Fujitsu’s North and South London data centres will drive down costs and significantly reduce Balfour Beatty’s energy consumption. Furthermore, the organisation is also planning to significantly rationalise the number of apps it uses, which currently stands at around 5,500.