London: 15 December 2011 - Camwood Limited, the UK-based specialists in application logistics, has announced the award of a three-year managed service contract from BAE Systems, to provide managed application certification services across the company’s UK desktop environment. The new contract builds on work done by Camwood over the past year where it provided expertise to BAE Systems and its partners in deploying applications to support the development of a ‘software as a service’ initiative.

Virtualising applications is seen by BAE Systems as a major step towards delivering more efficient IT services.  Instead of applications being hosted on each of 37,500+ individual desktops across the UK organisation, they will be stored centrally and as many as possible delivered using Microsoft’s App-V technology.

Allan Leggetter, Director of Enterprise IT Services for BAE Systems: “We recognise that undertaking a “software as a service” transformation will enable the business to be more agile in the deployment and management of applications across the enterprise. Camwood, as a recognised provider of expert services in this field, has been pivotal in progressing this initiative and is crucial to its on-going success.”

With the award of this three-year contract, Camwood is now the specialist partner for the application certification component and will design, implement and operate the service according to agreed standards. It will also manage the service, providing a high level of governance and controls using best practise methodologies that conform to the latest ITIL standards.

Camwood will assess commercial off-the-shelf applications (COTS) and applications developed in-house by BAE Systems using Microsoft App-V, the virtualisation platform chosen by BAE Systems. Those applications not found to be suitable for virtualisation in their current form will either be developed for suitability, or deployed using MSI technology.

Certification is just one part of the service that Camwood will provide. In effect it will, using Camwood Application Lifecycle Manager manage applications from ‘cradle to grave’.  This can track applications throughout the key stages of the engineering lifecycle while also providing real-time status information to BAE Systems and partners responsible for other parts of the virtualisation project.

The award of this contract is a clear reflection of both Camwood’s experience in application logistics working with large enterprises worldwide and previous work done for BAE Systems on this and other projects. As Frank Foxall, CEO of Camwood commented: “Having worked closely with BAE Systems for several years, Camwood was the ideal candidate when it came to delivering this highly specialised service. Indeed, BAE Systems explicitly sought Camwood as its preferred supplier for application certification based on our proven expertise in the field.”