BT to design, build and manage hybrid network and related IT services for the age of the cloud

Nov 23, 2016 - 08:26 GMT: BT today announced a contract with international mining and construction equipment manufacturer Komatsu for a new global IT infrastructure covering 26 sites across 15 countries in Europe, Asia-Pacific and South-America.

BT will design, build and manage a resilient, hybrid network combining BT’s IP Connect Globalwith its hybrid service (hVPN) for smaller locations, which lets office-based workers securely access their corporate network through the internet.

Komatsu’s business critical voice traffic for around 1,100 employees will be routed using BT’s One Voice centralised SIP trunking service - replacing traditional voice services with voice-over-IP technology. BT’s biggest customers lower their costs by up to 34 per cent by switching to BT One Voice.

The scope also includesperformance improvements for Komatsu’s enterprise applications - including its voice traffic - by using BT Connect Intelligence, where the quality of service will be measured in terms of business outcomes rather than traditional network SLAs.

It is important for Komatsu that its new provider possesses strong data centre and cloud services integration capabilities, as it foresees to migrate a number of its enterprise applications to the cloud over the coming years.

As a first step, BT’s professional services team, BT Advise, will consolidate Komatsu’s central IT infrastructure in two BT data centres. BT Compute data centre services in-scope include telehousing, internet access and load balancing – improving the distribution of workloads across multiple computing resources.

Chris Borremans, CIO at Komatsu Europe, said: “Today’s agreement is the start of a journey whereby we will be moving towards flexible, cloud-based services supporting our operations, customers and employees across the globe. We believe that BT is the right cloud services integrator to help shape our roadmap and realise our vision.”

Fabrice De Windt, BT’s CEO for the Benelux, said: "We are very proud that Komatsu has selected us for its global IT infrastructure. This opens the path for an ambitious digital transformation journey, supported by our Cloud of Cloudsportfolio strategy. We are looking forward to demonstrating how our global capabilities will drive great business outcomes for Komatsu."