At the annual Network Rail Partnership Awards ceremony, Rory Bremner and Catherine Doran, Network Rail Transformational Director, presented Atos Origin with the award for information technology partnership. It recognises the excellent work of the Atos Origin team in delivering the External Services Gateway (ESG) earlier this year.

The ESG provides a secure, reliable, high performance and scalable communications gateway linking 30,000 Network Rail users with their suppliers, the internet and the wider rail community. Its reliability ensures that the flow of information is uninterrupted with availability improved from 85% to 99.9%. Security is managed 24 hours a day 7 days a week, scanning around 75 million emails a year and securely handling 90 million web searches per annum.

Speaking at the awards Iain Coucher, chief executive, said: “Britain relies on rail; it's a fact. These awards provide the perfect opportunity to show our appreciation and give thanks to the thousands of people from the rail industry that keep this country moving. The standard of entries has been extremely high this year, making the selection process really tough so congratulations to all our finalists. You should all be proud of your achievements.”