London City Airport (LCY) is a private limited company owned by a consortium of international infrastructure investors. Built in 1987, LCY today handles millions of passengers rather than the thousands it was originally designed for. It has limited scope for physical expansion because of its location. LCY’s management developed a parallel growth strategy using new technologies to speed up throughput and attract new customers and airlines. The program focused on LCY’s proposition – the promise to customers that when departing they can move from the departure lounge entrance to their gate in 20 minutes, and from arrivals hall to taxi or train within 15 minutes.

Key Issues

• Migrate critical services offsite to private cloud and refresh LAN and other infrastructure on LCY campus
• Overcome physical expansion constraints
• Help LCY work toward its aim of 6.5m passengers by 2025, and attract new airlines and routes and a new buyer for the airport

Solution

LCY’s transformation of IT processes, people and technology was achieved with the expertise and assistance of Telstra Purple. Telstra Purple experts worked closely with the LCY team, comprising of a multi-disciplinary group with responsibilities including business case development, technical architecture, service management, business continuity, security, RFP management and supplier selection, with executive sponsorship and direct involvement at Telstra Purple and LCY board level.

As part of the process we:

• Completed an Infrastructure and network upgrade, LAN refresh, and improved service management
• Provided governance and managed the transition to new systems and suppliers as part of an overall plan to improve performance, service levels and resilience
• Closed existing onsite data centres, and transitioned core applications and services into managed co-location

Outcome

Together Telstra Purple and LCY accelerated an increase in overall IT maturity from ad-hoc to measured and controlled processes, enabling:

• Migration of 31 business services to private cloud
• Expansion of terminal and pier capacity expansion with review of SLA-aligned critical business services contracts
• 4 minute reduction in aircraft turnaround time 
  

Telstra Purple provided governance and managed the transition to new systems and suppliers as part of an overall plan to improve performance, service levels and resilience, including:

• Meticulous planning and a strong risk management ethos allowed the program to be delivered with zero impact on passengers or airlines
• Improved customer experience and speed at all touchpoints
• The profile of IT raised to board level