Virgin Atlantic hopes to boost staff productivity and enhance customer satisfaction by handing over the reins of its voice and data communications network to a third party.
The airline has signed a two-year managed services deal, worth more than half a million pounds, with communications integrator Affiniti.
Like many of its counterparts, Virgin's voice and data channels have reached mission-critical status. They support a variety of operational areas including check-in desks, departure lounges, flight operations and engineering. As such, the company cannot afford any problems.
As part of the deal, Affiniti will be responsible for looking after the 2,500 PC-strong network, which spans Virgin's 11 offices in the UK. It will remotely manage the systems from its network operations centre in Hemel Hempstead in a bid to try to identify and resolve technical problems before they evolved into business issues.
"The ability to identify problems on the network in real-time, before they affect business operations is vital to our efficiency," said Kim Pharro, Virgin Atlantic's infrastructure services manager.
The deal is the latest iteration of an existing relationship between Affiniti and Virgin. Historically, the company has managed the airline's PBX systems.
