Australian Air Express adopts HP SaaS

Australian air Express has completed a progressive three-year transition to a hosted platform that monitors the IT systems underpinning freight movements.

The HP Business Availability Center (BAC) replaced a combination of "software and manual point solutions".

"[In the past] it was extremely difficult to be proactive in the management of incidents," Australian air Express chief information officer Munro Farmer said.

"When IT found out about issues, they had often been ongoing for some time."

With an estimated 2,000 staff and a delivery network spanning more than 200 countries, IT outages at AaE could have "wide-ranging impacts", Farmer said.

The company sought to achieve a consolidated picture of its environment and the ability to proactively monitor for possible issues, in accordance with the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) methodology.

It chose HP's SaaS BAC, including SiteScope and Quality Center tools.

Because the products were delivered as a managed service over the Internet, upfront software investment was no longer a "barrier to entry for an organisation of our size," Farmer said.

HP's BAC now formed the foundation of the organisation's closed loop incident and change management processes.

It was key to providing uninterrupted services to some 1,600 drivers equipped with mobility solutions, Farmer said, with SiteScope delivering automatic, agentless monitoring and Quality Centre supporting test management.

Neither organisation was willing to disclose the cost of the new system, although HP expected it to reduce AaE's testing expenditure by almost 30 percent.

Farmer said AaE's IT unit aimed to deliver lean, agile solutions through technologies like software-as-a-service and virtualisation, as well as the standardisation and commoditisation of platforms and solutions.

"IT does play a significant role in our business," he told iTnews. "Most critical business processes are underpinned by technology solutions."

"In recent years, there has been significant investment and improvement in our infrastructure and capabilities," he said.