Qantas has announced that, subject to the finalisation of
contractual agreements, it would move its IT applications support and maintenance to global
service providers Satyam Computer Services Limited and Tata Consulting Services.The Chief Executive Officer of Qantas, Mr Geoff Dixon, said the move, which followed a 12-month
review, would commence from November 2006.
“There is an increasing concentration of suppliers with the skills we need for the ongoing support of
these applications, and these suppliers are achieving a scale and efficiency that airlines like
Qantas simply cannot match,” Mr Dixon said.
He said it would require an investment of $100 million for Qantas to develop its inhouse capability
in this area to industry best practice standard - an investment it could not support given the
extensive capital expenditure program already underway.
“The applications support and maintenance work relates to over 300 applications that use a wide
range of computer languages and technologies. Much of this work involves aging systems.”
Mr Dixon said the transition to Satyam and Tata, which would take place over 15 months, would
mean the loss of up to 340 Qantas IT positions.
“Satyam and Tata have established operations in Australia, with a third of the positions undertaking
Qantas’ work to remain onshore.”
Mr Dixon said Qantas had provided regular briefings to its staff throughout the review process.
“We will continue to keep staff fully informed throughout the transition process, and will provide
support to them through this change.”
He said Qantas had a comprehensive security policy in place, including stringent data security
controls, which extended to all of its suppliers and would include Satyam and Tata.
“Qantas, like almost every airline in the world, already has outsource arrangements for data.
“We have had a customer data offshore facility in Germany for four years with no breaches of
privacy. Similarly, we outsourced our data centre operations to IBM two years ago with no issues.”
Qantas has 37,000 employees, 93 per cent of whom are based in Australia.
——-