NATS Moves Into The Cloud

NATS, the UK's air traffic control organisation, is to implement a multi-million pound project to transfer all its destop IT services to a cloud-based infrastructure to make savings of £9m.

Over the next four years NATS plans to create a virtual desktop environment, which it hopes will shrink its environmental footprint, improve flexibility and enhance the service it provides to around 6,000 staff. It is believed the implementation will be the largest cloud-based infrastructure in the transport sector. Once complete, staff will have access to the services, information and applications they need for their particular role, across the country. Initially, it is being trialled with 300 users in 2011. NATS expects to roll out the cloud-based infrastructure to all staff in the first half of 2012.