Surrey County Council has
embarked on a major IT-driven business transformation project for
the first time since restructuring its IT division.
The council has signed a five-year £18m deal so that it can
migrate some 13,500 network nodes spread across 180 locations from
a bespoke IP network to Cable & Wireless’ UK-wide IP VPN.
By switching to Cable & Wireless’ network, Surrey expects to
cut its operating costs by up to 25%.
The new network should also enable Surrey to sell some of its
properties without incurring excessive costs or significant
disruption to front-line services.
Surrey, which is the UK’s fourth-largest council, had started no
business transformation projects involving IT since John Gladman
stepped down as its head of IT in spring 2006.
The IT department was restructured and brought within a new
corporate services division, including finance and human resources.
A new head of IMT, Dominic O’Carroll, was appointed on a part-time
basis in autumn 2006.
O’Carroll, who is now in the post full time, will work with
Surrey’s estates and planning function to rationalise the number of
properties owned by the council.
Cable & Wireless will take 12 months to complete the
migration to the IP VPN. The new network will make it easier to
share information with other public sector agencies both within
Surrey and outside the county.
O’Carroll said, “There are the issues of starting to share on a
wider basis and there will be a lot of work on the optimisation of
the SAP platform.”
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Link to
SAP
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