Burlington Northern Santa Fe has formed a partnership with Infosys Technologies Ltd., under which Infosys would create a co-sourcing model — integrating railroad and Infosys teams — to design, implement and manage certain information technology (IT) systems.
Infosys-developed would be designed to streamline IT systems and applications.
"We need to become more efficient in software development, and we believe Infosys' core competence in building distributed technology teams, combined with their knowledge of the transportation industry, will enable BNSF to leverage round-the-clock service that will reduce IT costs and meet our objectives in a quality manner," said Greg Fox, BNSF vice president of technology services and chief information officer, in a prepared statement.
In another IT cost-saving move, BNSF June 19 purchased Waveset Lighthouse™ software designed to control user access to the railroad's legacy- and Web-based applications, and help decrease operational IT spending.
BNSF currently uses a combination of un-integrated and in-house solutions to manage security risks brought on by the 45,000 internal and external users accessing the railroad's Web-based applications.
"To operate our services efficiently, we need a highly automated, intuitive solution that controls the configuration of users across hundreds of geographically dispersed applications and systems," said Rick Perry, BNSF director of enterprise operations and security. "Lighthouse will help ensure that we meet our quality of service needs while continuing to comply with critical security controls and standards."
BNSF plans to implement Lighthouse to reduce the turnaround time for creating new user accounts and account changes from two days to a few minutes, and improve the timeliness of password resets. The software also is designed to enable the railroad to more easily view and manage a user's access to applications, and to turn that access on or off, depending on a user's change in status.
Source: Progressive Railroading Daily News
