Skip to main content

Vodafone and IBM to provide new tech to National Express

Tech giants Vodafone and IBM have signed an eight-year deal to equip National Express coaches with cloud and digital services to improve safety. Vodafone Business and IBM joined forces in January to offer customers access to technologies for integrating multiple clouds. Debbie O’Shea, group chief information officer for National Express, says: “This partnership enables us to move to a cloud environment giving us a future-proofed platform with increased flexibility that will better support our business.”
September 4, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

Tech giants 813 Vodafone and 62 IBM have signed an eight-year deal to equip 1002 National Express coaches with cloud and digital services to improve safety.

Vodafone Business and IBM joined forces in January to offer customers access to technologies for integrating multiple clouds.

Debbie O’Shea, group chief information officer for National Express, says: “This partnership enables us to move to a cloud environment giving us a future-proofed platform with increased flexibility that will better support our business.”

The venture will modernise National Express’ IT estate by moving to IBM Cloud and implementing a hybrid cloud strategy, allowing the company to manage multiple clouds in different locations. Additional security and risk management will be added to protect the transport operator’s technology infrastructure.

Vodafone says this activity will enable National Express to develop flexible payment options and always-connected vehicles.

Looking ahead, the venture will give the bus firm access to other cloud services and technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, edge computing and analytics.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Norwegian Public Roads Administration Turns to IBM for centralised tolling
    March 26, 2014
    The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) has selected IBM to design, build and deliver a new centralised road toll system across Norway. Drawing upon IBM's extensive traffic system management experience, big data and analytics capabilities, and mobile expertise, the new toll system, called AutoPASS Grindgut, will process more than 470 million vehicle passages per year, accounting for approximately US$1.3 billion in road user charges.
  • Senet and Frost combine to combat chill
    October 9, 2020
    Partners use LoRaWAN spec to help save municipalities money on winter roads
  • Control rooms prepare for AI disruption
    July 18, 2023
    From the cloud to AI, big change is coming to the control room technology sector. Adam Hill asks experts from Barco, UVS and Swarco what developments they are seeing as data points proliferate
  • IBTTA Summit: satellite tolling is the future
    August 15, 2019
    IBTTA members met in Florida to consider the technological changes that will impact their businesses – including satellite tolling. Colin Sowman reports from Orlando Over decades, the technology employed in toll collection has been honed to near perfection – automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are easily within a couple of per cent of infallibility even at highway speeds. However, technical innovations beyond the confines of the toll road cannot b