BWI GmbH is a German public IT services provider owned by the

German Federal Ministry of Defence The Federal Ministry of Defence (, ; abbreviated BMVg) is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The ministry is headquartered at the Hardthöhe barracks itself located at t ...

. The company has its roots in the ''HERKULES'' project launched in 2006, Germany's largest

public–private partnership A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a long-term arrangement between a government and private sectors, private sector institutions.Hodge, G. A and Greve, C. (2007), Public–Private Partnerships: An International Performance Revie ...

to date for modernizing the IT of the

German Armed Forces The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: German Army, ...

. BWI is today responsible for the operation, expansion and maintenance of a large part of the IT systems of the Federal Ministry of Defence and the German Armed Forces.

History

BWI was founded as ''BWI Informationstechnik GmbH'' in 2006 as part of the ''HERKULES'' project together with the two subsidiaries ''BWI Systeme GmbH'' and ''BWI Services GmbH''. With ''HERKULES'', large parts of the non-militarised IT services of the Bundeswehr were outsourced to BWI.

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the positi ...

and

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

acted as civilian partner companies, together holding a share of 50.10 percent of the

Joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

. BWI assumed responsibility for the modernization, support and operation of 140,000 PCs, 7,000 servers and 300,000 landline telephones as well as 15,000 cell phones. In addition, the contract included the introduction and operation of

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in the xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a s ...

enterprise resource management systems in parts of the Bundeswehr as well as the consolidation and operation of the computing centres and

WAN WAN or Wan may refer to: Language * Wan language of the Ivory Coast * 万/萬 (Pinyin: Wàn), 10,000 in Chinese People * Wan (surname) ( and ), a Chinese surname * Wan (surname 溫), an alternative spelling for the Chinese surname Wen (溫) * ...

and

LAN Lan or LAN may refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in space * ...

infrastructure of the German military. The 10-year contract expired in 2016. The original contract volume was 7.1 billion euros, making it the largest

Public–private partnership A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a long-term arrangement between a government and private sectors, private sector institutions.Hodge, G. A and Greve, C. (2007), Public–Private Partnerships: An International Performance Revie ...

in Germany as at 2021. In 2016, all three legal entities of BWI were merged into BWI GmbH and the Ministry of Defence took over the shares of Siemens and IBM. Since then, the entreprise has been fully public-owned. As a result of the non-continuation of the public-private partnership and the takeover of the business shares of Siemens and IBM, the Federal Ministry of Defence was ordered to make a compensation payment to the companies involved. Since then, the scope of IT services taken over for the Bundeswehr and the Federal Ministry of Defense has been expanded. The company has also grown to over 6,500 employees. This makes it one of the largest IT service providers in Germany. BWI also provides services for other federal ministries and agencies, such as the Federal Ministry of Health. For these other federal institutions, however, the Federal Information Technology Center (ITZBund) is the primary IT service provider.

Services

BWI has divided its services into different portfolios: * Security Services:

Information security Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...

consulting,

Intrusion detection system An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically either reported to an administrator or collec ...

s for the German Armed Forces * Business Services: IT consulting and IT integration services * End User Services: Operation, maintenance and renewal of desktop PCs, laptops, cell phones. * Infrastructure Services: Operation, maintenance and renewal of the Bundeswehr's data centers and network structure * User Support Services: Operation of user support and telephone hotlines.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
Companies based in North Rhine-Westphalia Information technology consulting firms of Germany ICT service providers Software companies of Germany Defence companies of Germany