Airservices Australia is looking for IT partners to develop an integrated monitoring and event management (IMEM) platform to transform its service management environment.
The platform will underpin the agency’s new virtualised service management and integrated services operations centre (ISOC), which will replace its physical technical operations centres (TOC) in Brisbane and Melbourne, which the agency said are “approaching end of supportable life.”
The request for tender states that the IMEM platform will monitor its enterprise IT services and OT, which consists of communications, navigation and surveillance technologies across Australia.
It will also monitor the agency's network infrastructure, including routers, switches, firewalls and wireless access points, and progressively integrate with in-house and MSP platforms VTScada, ServiceNow, Zabbix, Icinga2 and Splunk.
Airservices said the selected partner will be required to assess, design and implement the IMEM platform and provide an ongoing managed service.
“Currently the TOC perform these monitoring and control functions in a highly manual way and are reactive to the environment because of an inefficient end-to-end view of enterprise service availability,” the request for tender stated.
“As part of modernisation, Airservices is transforming the Technical Operations Centre into the Integrated Service Operations Centre (ISOC)," the request for tender stated.
“To fully realise the benefits associated with major project and program investments, there is a need to adopt and align a unified approach to the way we plan, design, operate and improve monitoring services.”
The project will begin in the first quarter of 2024, with completion expected by the end of the 2024 financial year.
OT monitoring and controls
Airservices' existing monitoring capabilites include National Technical Monitoring System (NTMS), a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) System which "gathers data from site- based Remote Telemetry Units (Field Devices), Monitoring subsystems and high-level interfaces."
The NTMS is connected to approximately 16,000 alarm points across 200 facilities and is a "core component of technical monitoring services that provide output control functionality and status monitoring of critical air navigation, surveillance, communications, and infrastructure equipment operated by Airservices."
The NTMS monitors the status of many systems that make up the National Airways System, including navigation aids, radios, communication links, generator operation and fuel levels, power supplies and electrical systems, building services such as air-conditioners and temperature and intruder alarms, and computers and servers such as radar data processing servers.
The request for tender states that the NTMS is being progressively replaced with a new solution based upon VTScada and "its focus will adjust from being the preferred centralised monitoring and control system to a more focussed element manager for control of regulated OT assets."
"We see strong benefit in maintaining NTMS as an element manager, while
the IMEM focuses on delivering an enterprise view of technology and service status."
Future expansion requires the IMEM will provide a monitoring capability that Airservices will use as one of the controls in place to comply with CASA regulatory requirements. Airservices OT assets are often the subject of CASA regulations, and it is intended that the IMEM will
have no ability to change the configuration or status of OT assets, the tender document states.
In 2018, ASG Group won an $84 million contract with Airservices to deliver a secure cloud platform and virtual desktop as a service (VDaaS).
That contract had a life of five years, with an option to renew for a further five.
