Boral outsources IT infrastructure to HP

Construction behemoth Boral has outsourced its IT infrastructure to HP following an internal review.

The firm said today it had appointed HP to transform its infrastructure in a five-year, multi-million dollar deal. It declined to comment on the exact value due to "commercial sensitivity". 

HP will consolidate two Boral data centres into its own Aurora data centre in Sydney, and will provide networking monitoring, security and support services.

It will also update Boral’s end-user PC hardware with new Compaq Elite 8300 desktop PCs and EliteBook 8470p notebooks. 

The outsource agreement falls under a broader transformation project that was first signalled by former Boral CIO Robert Gates in August last year.

Gates told iTnews at the time that Boral was in the midst of an end-to-end infrastructure assessment, which went on to inform the company's decision to outsource.

The decision was also made last year but was only publicly confirmed today.

Boral's new chief information officer David Oxnam told iTnews that 40 IT workers would be let go as a result of the HP deal. Ten had shifted across to HP.

New CIO

Though it appeared Boral had dispensed with its CIO role entirely in January following an internal restructure, the firm has retained the role but switched its corporate reporting line.

Under the restructure, former CIO Robert Gates was promoted to the newly-created position of chief administration officer, with his responsibilities encompassing human resources, environment, safety, procurement and IT.

Long-time Boral executive David Oxnam took over the vacant CIO position in November last year. He was previously division manager of finance for Boral’s construction business.

The CIO previously reported to the CFO and CEO. Oxnam said despite Gates' experience as CIO, under the new reporting lines the responsibility for IT strategy still lay with him.

“Robert’s got a fairly broad brief over many administration functions, IT is just one of those,” he said. “He leaves me to get on with the role. He started some fantastic work as CIO, and I’m continuing to execute on some of the strategies he started.”

The executive shuffle preceded a major internal business restructure which saw Boral announce a workforce reduction of 1000 staff, 95 in IT. 

Oxnam told iTnews today that reductions around the HP contract had been accounted for under the figure announced in January.

Boral will have 80 staff left in its internal IT team after the five-year IT transformation is completed.