BIAL-Nortel contract extended by three years
By siliconindia   |   Friday, 14 August 2009, 22:26 IST
Printer Print Email Email
Bangalore: Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) has announced the extension of its end-to-end managed services contract with Nortel for three years. Under the contract, Nortel will manage BIAL's entire IT infrastructure including data and wireless network systems, and also oversee network security. "Over the past year, the airport has handled 8.7 million passengers and over 120,000 aircraft movements. By managing our critical networks, Nortel has relieved us of our network concerns and has made it possible for BIAL to focus its valuable resources on managing our core aviation business, rather than our voice and data networks," said Marcel Hungerbuehler, CEO, BIAL. Nortel's Network Operations Center (NOC) in India will manage this network to ensure the high level of reliability and dependability the airport requires. All passenger centric critical business applications like baggage handling and tracking, ticketing, passenger handling and free WiFi internet connectivity at BIAL run on Nortel's communication infrastructure. Nortel's voice solution provides a carrier grade voice over IP (VoIP) network across the entire airport, connecting approximately 1,000 VoIP points. Nortel's data network connects approximately 5,000 endpoints. BIAL leases the data and voice network to its various tenants, including airlines, restaurants, cargo handlers and other groups which manage their own, round-the-clock operational applications. "With this contract, BIAL only has to work with one expert partner who can manage the entire infrastructure for them as per their service level agreement (SLA) requirements," says Ashish Dhawan, Country Manager, Enterprise, Nortel India. "The BIAL network has components from multiple vendors and system integrators. BIAL preferred to have a holistic, single window approach which Nortel was able to provide from its NOC facility in India." Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) is a Public Limited Company under the Companies Act formed to build, own and operate Bangalore's greenfield private sector, owned and operated airport - the Bengaluru International Airport. "We need to give secure network access to each of our tenants, so we run separate virtual local area networks (LANs) for them. Nortel manages these networks remotely and ensures they are secure at all times," said S. Francis Rajan, Head-ICT, BIAL. "The network design ensures that all the different tenants at BIAL are isolated and secure from each other, even though they share the same physical infrastructure."

siliconindia