EDS LOOKS BEYOND DII
By Julian Nettlefold, Editor, BATTLESPACE
15 Sep 07. EDS Defence gave BATTLESPACE Editor Julian Nettlefold an overview of the Company’s current and future business opportunities with the MoD and other defence agencies during DSEI.
DII
On March 2005 the EDS-led Atlas consortium was selected as preferred bidder to supply Increment One of the UK’s Defence Information Infrastructure (DII)
DII provides computer outsourcing, training and support services for the British MoD under a provisional 2 year £2.3bn Increment One contract of three. The MoD reviewed the progress of the Atlas consortium’s progress and performance on Increment 1 in the Second Quarter of 06. Increment 1 will run until 1st Quarter 07. Increment 2 will run from April 07 until March 08 and Increment 3 from March 08 until 1st Quarter 09.
The ATLAS Consortium is responsible for delivering the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII Future) project for the UK MoD. ATLAS is led by EDS, with Fujitsu Services as a Tier 1 partner, General Dynamics, LogicaCMG and EADS Defence and Security Systems Ltd (Cogent) as tier 2 partners and IBM and HP as exclusive capability partners. ATLAS was awarded the contract for increment 1 of DII (F) in March 2005, with a budget of approximately£2.3 bn.
In January 2007 the MoD approved an amendment to Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) (DII(F)) contract, confirming that ATLAS will deliver DII Increment 2a. The contract amendment enables EDS to increase its previously stated estimates for revenue from the MOD DII (F) contract over the next eight years by approx £680,000.
Increment 2 of the DII programme is comprised of three elements: in the Deployed Environment (Component Command HQs); at Above Secret classifications; and also a further tranche of workstations in the office (Fixed) environment. Increment 2a covers the Fixed element, which will provide for nearly 44,000 additional User Access Devices and 58,000 User Accounts in support of the Defence Change Programme and other identified business priorities.
The DII (F) project replaces numerous individual information systems throughout the MOD with a single, more efficient information infrastructure. It will also enable many of the defense efficiency measures under the UK Defence Change Programme to be achieved. These include Network Enabled Capability – the ability to improve the capability of the armed forces through a single network of information – announced in the UK Defence White Paper.
DII (F) will achieve this by extending into the operational arena, interfacing with battlespace systems and improving shared information between headquarters, battlefield support and the front line. DII (F) will allow greater interoperability between the MOD and its allies, allowing significantly more effective operational support than currently available.
Underlining the reasons behind the reported delays in the DII Project, EDS Defence told BATTLESPACE that the main reasons for the delay resulted in increased troop deployments due to operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the merger of the DPA and the DLO and the myriad of differing software and operating systems encountered during the process of renewal of terminals and systems.
“Delivery of 10,000 units deployed[JC2] was the key deliverable to enable Atlas to take the contract forward to DII Increment 2b, which is the Deployed variant of the contract. We achieved this on time and to budget and indeed delivered 3500 units in one month using hardware from DELL, HP and IBM all with Microsoft software. Windows is the core operating solution for DII. For the next Increment we are looking at semi-rugged laptops, PDAs and some desktop solutions,” EDS said.
Agile JOP
It is a remarkable fact that the EDS JOCS system has been in operation at Northwood since the award of PJOCS in 1996, and has been used in every UK joint operation and major exercise since the formation of the PJHQ in that yea