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Bulletproof Network Supports Defense Company Growth and Collaboration

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Industry Focus

Defense and Aerospace Systems

Size

Annual revenues of $15 billion

Networking Solution

MPLS-based IP network integrates acquisitions quickly, supports teamwork and meets multi-level security requirements

Business Value

Scalable network grows easily with the corporation, encourages "borderless" collaboration

About Our Customer

BAE Systems Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of BAE Systems plc, an international company engaged in the development, delivery and support of advanced defense and aerospace systems in the air, on land, at sea and in space. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, BAE Systems, Inc. employs some 53,000 employees in the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Israel, Turkey, and South Africa, generating annual revenues of $15 billion. BAE Systems Inc. provides support and service solutions for current and future defense, intelligence and civilian systems. The company also designs, develops and manufactures a wide range of electronic systems and subsystems for both military and commercial applications; and designs, develops, produces and provides service support of armored combat vehicles, artillery systems and intelligent munitions. It has major operations across five continents and customers in more than 100 countries. In the U.S., BAE Systems Inc. is the seventh largest supplier to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Situation

BAE Systems Inc. has a strategic objective of sustaining a high-performance, collaborative culture. This was easier to accomplish when the U.S.-based corporation employed just a few thousand. Today, there is a staff of more than 43,000 in 38 states. Since 2000, the company has acquired more than 12 U.S. businesses and has successfully integrated them into BAE Systems Inc. It needed a flexible approach to quickly provide secure "borderless connectivity" irrespective of organizational structure for these and future acquisitions. A Wide Area Network that was implemented in 1999 needed a complete overhaul and hence Project "I-06 - Information Highway 2006" was initiated.

Solution

Supporting aggressive growth and facilitating teamwork required a secure and adaptable MPLS-based network. AT&T VPN Service gives BAE Systems' employees the flexibility to "design anywhere, build anywhere and service anywhere" for the benefit of customers. The network also allows for the integration of multiple security levels and provides a common, fully meshed infrastructure that scales to support ever-growing business requirements. Deploying this secure, high-performance IP network supports BAE Systems Inc.'s goal of being a leader in Technology and Performance Excellence. This is an important element of the company's success strategy.

Technology Powers Growth Trajectory

BAE Systems relies heavily on the latest technology. The company points proudly to its record of innovation and technological breakthroughs from the dawn of flight and invention of the radio to advanced aerospace, electronics and defense solutions. Dramatic growth has required the company to take a long-term view of its networking. "As our company grew, our requirements to communicate securely, and sharing of information also grew tremendously," said Bharat Amin, BAE Systems Inc.'s former corporate director of Information Technology and now CIO for Land & Armaments.

Because much of BAE Systems' growth came as the result of acquisitions, the company faced the challenge of integrating acquired companies' networks into the BAE Systems environment. The MPLS platform makes it easy to add these new locations. "We have developed an integration model, a cookbook approach, which allows us to integrate core IT infrastructure in 30, 60 or 90 days," Amin said. "Certain things, like the company name and email addresses, must change immediately so shareholders are aware that the company is now part of BAE Systems."

The network supports vital communications during the transition period. "Instead of communicating with the acquired company via the Internet, we connect them internally with limited capability and, according to our integration plan, they become part of our integral network," Amin added.

Aspiration to Become a Borderless Organization

"In order to gain leverage and value from acquisitions we need to connect people together to make sure that they can reuse intellectual property. We want to provide a topology that facilitates inter- and intra-organization operating groups and borderless communications," Amin said. "Our mantra has been 'design anywhere, build anywhere and service anywhere.' That means that we don't care where people are; they should be able to get to whatever they want and collaborate with whomever they want as if they were sitting next to each other." BAE Systems Inc. employs a high-technology work force with more than 15,000 engineers on its payroll. To sustain its high performance culture, its employees must have access to applications and information ubiquitously to support the aspirations of a "borderless" organization. "We want to bring work to people - not people to work. Networking becomes a big part of achieving that aspiration," said Amin.

The high reliability of its MPLS platform has been a crucial enabler for BAE Systems to become a borderless organization. "Most of our employees are extremely dependent on the network," said Amin. "I can't afford to have the network down even for five minutes because people are so used to it. It's like expecting a dial tone every time you pick up a phone. I better have the same type of mentality every time a user tries to connect with someone within an organization."

Keeping Customers at the Center

It's not just employees who require reliable access to critical business processes, but customers as well. "The company's senior leaders went through strategy sessions to determine where it needs to be in three to five years," Amin said. "What surfaced on the top was that we wanted to be a customer-centric operation." As a result, to better respond to customer markets the company restructured into three operating groups: Electronics and Integrated Solutions, Land and Armaments, and Customer Solutions.

Re-architecting its network infrastructure to accommodate the restructure was simple since the network wasn't reliant upon the company's organization. "We always had a vision that infrastructure should not be driven by organizational structure," Amin said. "It should be flexible enough, scaleable enough that it can meet any organization restructuring."

An integral part of the Customer Solutions operating group is BAE Systems Information Technology, a full-service solutions provider of information systems and services to intelligence, defense and federal government customers. "MPLS makes it easy for our internal as well as external customers to access applications and services on BAE Systems' network," said Steve Fall, BAE-IT technical director of WAN Engineering. "Our network design and architecture provides a virtualized environment with multiple layers that logically separate traffic based on customer requirements.

"We'll be able to interact with customers much more quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively because of the technology we deployed," Fall said. "We can now very easily extend necessary applications such as video teleconferencing to them and provide training across our network," he added. "All we have to do is give customers a connection and make sure they meet our security requirements. We then can converge voice, video and data efficiently and transport and deliver that content to our customers cost effectively."

BAE Systems has no borders in terms of meeting customer collaboration requirements, particularly for projects with complicated requirements. "We are not going to be bound by physical location," said Fall. "We are going to serve our customers from virtually any location based on their needs."

Internal customers also benefit from the network. "Prior to MPLS, our west coast engineers were frustrated by the time it took to interact with an east coast-hosted design tool," Fall said. "We virtually eliminated that issue when we put in the new network. The MPLS technology itself is enabling us to realize a 30 to 50 percent performance improvement."

Multi-Layered Security Meets Complex Requirements

Even though BAE Systems Inc. is headquartered in the U.S., its parent company BAE Systems plc is British-owned, which necessitated special network security requirements.

More than 50 percent of U.S. employees hold security clearances. Providing them access to sensitive information while restricting access by others was one of BAE Systems' primary challenges. The versatility of MPLS has enabled the company to create a four-tiered network that satisfies its security needs while still facilitating end-to-end connectivity. The network has a top layer that securely limits access to those with the appropriate security clearance. A second layer allows for wider access, a third level permits Internet access and a fourth extranet layer allows partners, subcontractors and customers to work together easily. "With our MPLS architecture we are able to extend these layers to any site we want to," Amin said. Now employees can freely access company applications without worrying about separate log-ons and special credentials.

While network security is crucial in a company like BAE Systems that handles sensitive defense and aerospace contracts, Amin says most corporations today are equally concerned about the security of their networks. "Security is of big concern to everybody, based on the threats and vulnerabilities that are out there," he said. This was a compelling reason for choosing the MPLS platform, which provides inherent disaster-recovery capabilities and superior levels of security and reliability.

Speed of Implementation, Unexpected Savings

Amin acknowledges he was cautious about making the move to AT&T VPN. He initially planned to migrate only eight sites, but immediately realized such significant bandwidth increases and cost savings that the company quickly implemented an additional 16 sites in phase one.

"The savings were tremendous - in the range of 40 percent - and our sites were able to increase their bandwidth requirements at a lower cost than what we were paying." The company began planning to cut over the remaining 84+ sites within two years, but found deployment so simple that it added all its U.S. sites within six months. Deploying the new network was also made easier because employees were eager to benefit from the VPN. "I didn't have to sell them on it. They came to us and said they wanted to be on the MPLS platform."

Steve Fall and the smart network engineering team who has managed such complex programs as implementing the Wide Area Network for NASA were very critical to the successful implementation of "Info Highway" I-06 Wide Area Network. "The genuine teamwork between our BAE-IT team, our IT service provider and AT&T's implementation team was also a key ingredient for success and over-exceeding our expectations," Amin said. The company anticipates it will achieve its return on investment in about 1.1 years, much sooner than officials had expected.

Amin plans to add international locations to the MPLS platform within the next six months, along with any new acquisitions as BAE Systems continues to grow in the U.S. "I am very confident in this architecture that we have put together with AT&T, because scalability was one of our top criteria.

"We've been able to manage our considerable growth in the last five years without significant investments," he continued. "That tells me that what we have done with the network meets our business requirements. In fact, we have over-exceeded our targets."

This WAN Re-Architecture Program "I-06" won a BAE Systems Chairman's Bronze Award for improving internal customers' performance. As BAE Systems parent company upgrades its own network in the U.K., Amin said he plans to recommend AT&T as a partner of choice "because of what they have done for us and how successful the network has been in the U.S."

Voice of the Customer

"Our mantra has been 'design anywhere, build anywhere and service anywhere.' That means that we don't care where people are; they should be able to get to whatever they want and collaborate with whomever they want as if they were sitting next to each other."

– Bharat Amin, CIO of Land & Armaments, BAE Systems Inc.