New Zealand-based Internet integration company gen-i has consolidated its
move into the Australian market with the announcement of a contract with
Air New Zealand Ansett to install and manage around 11,500 desktops as part
of the airline’s IT services overhaul.
The agreement, which is expected to generate multi-million dollar cost
savings for the airline over the next three years, includes the supply of
PCs, terminals and servers for the newly merged airline, plus full facility
management services, configuration, optimisation and support services for
the next three years.
Gen-i’s management of desktops and servers includes services such as bag
tagging, kiosks, and some check-in facilities, plus network storage and
backup services.
Air New Zealand, which is expecting a reduction of around 45 per cent on
its desktop infrastructure costs, said the contract was a key part of the
airline’s focus on reducing IT costs and establishing a sound
enterprise-wide IT infrastructures, enabling the integration of the
separate systems used by Ansett and Air New Zealand individually.
“We have identified group-wide IT integration as critical to the successful
functioning of our entire business,” an airline spokesman said. “This will
improve service and reduce costs in the wider business.”
Gen-i said the contract represented a milestone in its expansion into the
Australian market. In 1997 the company worked with Air New Zealand to
develop a desktop service, the largest in the country at the time,
according to gen-i. On top of this contract, gen-i also provided project
management, technical consulting, software development, network
architenture, server administration and prcurement services.
Gen-I said it was the provision of these services in the past which had led
to the winning of this contract with Ansett Air New Zealand “We have a long
history with Air New Zealand,” said gen-i’s client director Mark Hardie.
“We have an in-depth understanding of their business requirements through
our project team, who were already working in the airline’s business units.
Partnering has provide to be an extremely successful method for Air New
Zealand to harness the benefits and control the costs of the growth and use
of personal computers,” he said.
