Rio Tinto bolsters IT systems with $20 million Empired deal

Rio Tinto continues to move forward in technology services signing a five-year, $20 million deal with IT services company Empired Limited to manage its collection of enterprise software.

Under the three year deal, which includes two separate one year options, Empired will provide the mining organization with application support and project services for more than 170 unique applications, which are largely technical systems used in the management of field operations spanning mining, processing, rail and port facilities.

Several of the technologies include legacy platforms, Oracle, Microsoft.Net, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft CRM.  

“We are delighted to be trusted by an organization as prestigious as Rio Tinto to manage applications that are critical to the efficient operation of one of the world’s largest mining operations,” said Russell Baskerville, Empired’s managing director,

“This award speaks volumes about the quality of services currently being provided by Empired to Rio Tinto under the TST program and I would like to thank all our staff for their professionalism and dedication to Empired and our clients.”

“I am also pleased to see our extended Microsoft capability through the acquisitions of OBS, eSavvy and Intergen leveraged to provide a seamless and cohesive solution to Rio Tinto. These acquisitions have been pivotal to our strategy and this win vindicates our strategy to leverage the broader capability to win large multi-year contracts.”

“Rio Tinto continues to present a great opportunity to Empired and we are focused on working with them to identify areas where we can assist Rio Tinto to deliver on its stated business objectives.”

Earlier this year, Rio signed a deal with Accenture to migrate its core enterprise IT systems to the cloud. The deal included modernization of Rio’s existing enterprise resourcing planning (ERP), information management platforms and consolidating applications in the public cloud.The deal alsoincluded incorporating consumption based pricing to ensure costs are fully flexible and in line with business demand.