Bull wins army email service deal

The army's email communications will be put in the hands of a French-owned company for the next 10 years, writes Tim Stammers.

Bull Information Systems has won a #10m Private Finance Initiative contract to provide the army with a complete, secure email solution, to be called Armymail.

The system will be rolled out to 30,000 service staff by September, and will eventually cover operational or mission-related messaging bet- ween up to 50,000 personnel.

'Bull will own both the hardware and the software systems,' said an army spokeswoman. 'It will act as a service provider. It will bear all the capital costs.'

The army cannot guarantee that staff working for Bull will not be able to access its communications covertly. 'As with other contracts with similar implications, staff and premises at Bull will be vetted to the same standards as at the MoD,' said the spokeswoman. 'They're no more likely to read the emails than I am. It's a good vetting procedure,' she added.

According to the army, Bull staff will be in the same position as contractors who build an army office and know building access codes.

Bull said a contract condition is that it does not discuss security with any third party.

'We have agreed that we cannot comment on security,' said Andy Walker, account manager at Bull.

Armymail will integrate existing disparate email systems using a modular backbone, with theatre switches in Germany, Northern Ireland and the UK mainland.