Following a common procurement action,
Eurocontrol and forty-one industry partners, primarily air navigation
service providers (ANSPs), have launched a new contract with BT for the
provision and management of a secure and highly resilient New Pan-European
Network Service (NewPENS).
The 10-year contract has an estimated
total value of more than €50m.
The new, ultra-resilient network will
connect around 100 locations across 47 countries in the Eurocontrol area and
neighbouring countries. It can be used by all air traffic management (ATM)
stakeholders to transfer business-critical data reliably, securely and
safely in a cost-efficient way.
It will be built on BT's IP network with
mission-critical connections running on a dual core infrastructure, offering
parallel connectivity that is physically and logically separated in order to
provide the highest levels of availability and resilience. NewPENS is the
successor to PENS, which was launched in December 2009. It is a major
upgrade - in service management as well as network architecture - and the
backbone for cross-border data and voice communications for the Network
Manager, ANSPs and other ATM stakeholders.
NewPENS’ features
- It is future-proof - ready to cope
with future ATM and network technology developments;
- It is open to a wider range of
stakeholders - the military, ATM providers, airlines, airports,
meteorological services as well as ANSPs;
- It offers increased flexibility in
supporting applications;
- Its safety levels will be ATM-grade
enabling it to support safety-critical applications;
- Its sophisticated cybersecurity
measures will protect users’ data;
- Where needed, availability will be up
to 99.999% - a decimal point higher than was the case for the current
PENS;
- Its service management framework will
feature a Europe-wide Service Desk with extensive monitoring and
reporting services;
- It will offer different ‘tiers’ of
service - from entry-level to mid-level, through to demanding high-end.
Users will only be invoiced for the services they select;
- Its governance has been updated to
reflect experience. Strong strategic guidance, proper supervision and
full support will be provided by different managerial levels in
participating organisations. NewPENS has:
-
a Top
Management Board (TMB) to drive strategic change;
-
a PENS
Executive Board (PEB) for effective collaboration with user communities;
-
an Air
Traffic Service Board (ATSB) with network managers from ANSPs and
Eurocontrol for tactical guidance and service management.
“NewPENS is an unparalleled common
procurement contract in pan-European air traffic management,” noted
Eamonn Brennan,
Director General of Eurocontrol and Vice-Chairman New PENS Top Management
Board. “With air traffic on the rise, NewPENS will provide solid support to
European aviation, securing cross-border network connections and
underpinning safety-critical applications.” he concluded.
“NewPENS will also support future ATM
applications, particularly for the SWIM (System-Wide Information Management)
architecture. It will be a key enabler for deploying services generated by
the SESAR[1] projects,” observed
Maurice Georges, Chairman NewPENS
TMB and Director of the French air navigation service provider, DSNA. “Its
technical service catalogue will evolve with technology and business
requirements. Its newly-designed architecture will ensure an increased level
of end-to-end control and authority.”
“With air traffic expected to double in
the years ahead, the need for secure and highly reliable communications has
never been greater and of more importance. Many leading multinationals, such
as members of the BT Radianz Cloud, the world’s largest secure networked
financial markets community, already rely on BT to connect their critical
global operations, people and data. The networking infrastructure we will
put in place for the NewPENS community will ensure ultra-high levels of
resilience and security for air traffic controllers to help them guide
planes safely to their destinations,” said
Bas Burger,
CEO Global Services, BT.
Next steps
The Network Manager will begin the
transition to NewPENS as soon as possible after the signature of the
contract. BT will set up its organisation, service management framework,
service desk, processes, transition model and network between April and
September 2018.
The ±100 sites belonging to the 30+
current PENS users as well as Eurocontrol will gradually be transferred in
clusters to NewPENS between October 2018 and 30 November 2019, the date on
which the current PENS contract will expire.
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