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DLR e.V – Lower IT costs, greater focus on core competencies, profitable joint venture
At a glance
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is the official German space agency, and also active in a variety of research and development projects, entailing collaboration with diverse domestic and international partners. In fact, aerospace now plays a key role in the lives of us all, for example via satellite communications and navigation systems. Moreover, research in this area has benefited a variety of industries, for example leading to innovative materials, new medical techniques and software development methods. DLR employs a staff of 5,000, operates 31 research institutions, and maintains testing and operational facilities at eight main sites in Germany. DLR has an annual budget of 450 million, including revenues from third-party business, for research, development and operational tasks. Its spacetravel budget is approximately 760 million.
Challenge
In-house ICT services were outsourced to a joint venture with T-Systems in the shape of a publicprivate partnership. The aim was to enhance the quality of resources available for DLR’s own R&D activities, and to leverage DLR’s expertise to create offerings tailored to other outsourcing customers in related fields. generating additional revenues. The joint venture’s portfolio includes the development, installation, operation and maintenance of servers and desktops, communications infrastructure and applications, as well as consulting services.
Solution
T-Systems has managed all aspects of DLR's ICT landscape since 1999. Services are delivered via a joint venture, known as Solutions for Research (SfR), specializing in ICT for the R&D community, and for universities. The contract came up for renewal in 2001 and 2004, and on each occasion T-Systems was able to fend off competitors by demonstrating the quality and cost-effectiveness of its offering. The outsourcing arrangement includes development, operation, maintenance, and optimization:
- Clients (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac) for administrative and scientific applications,
- servers, file services, server hosting, backup and archiving services
- Networks (LAN, WAN and telecommunications), including security services, directory services and mobile connectivity
- Supercomputing services, and support for solutions for simulation work, visualization and grid computing
- Administrative applications (generally SAP)
- Internet/intranet (Sharepoint and Apache) and collaboration platforms (Service-Oriented Architecture, SOA)
- E-mail and groupware environment based on Microsoft Exchange
The joint venture is a public-private partnership that now serves other outsourcing customers actively involved in research and development.
Customer benefits
DLR now receives reliable, high-quality and flexible ICT services, enabling it to concentrate on its core competencies. Moreover, the German Aerospace Center now has access to Europe's most scalable and powerful grid-computing infrastructure, and has achieved cost savings of approximately 25 percent for its high-performance computing tasks.
