Micromuse picked as sub on U.K. project

Micromuse Inc., a provider of scalable, real-time business and service assurance software, will provide elements of the service management and assurance components to an EDS Corp.-led contract for the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence, Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) project, said Micromuse officials.

The subcontract is worth more than $50 million to Micromuse, company officials said. The company was founded in England, and its largest software development center is in London. Micromuse is in San Francisco.

If increments two and three are awarded by the Ministry of Defence, the contract could potentially be worth more than $100 million to Micromuse, officials said.

The project is intended to enable better communication between 340,000 military personnel and civilian employees, and will connect and support 150,000 desktop PCs, laptops and other devices at permanent military sites, airfield and staging units, as well as battleships and submarines.

"End-to-end service visibility and proactive identification of service-affecting infrastructure faults is critical to the success of this project," said Martin Southgate, chief executive officer of the project, known as the Atlas Consortium. "Working within the overall Atlas delivered solution, we believe that Micromuse's Netcool solutions have the ability to scale to complex infrastructures within limited bandwidth environments."