The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is to spend GBP 312 million on a revamp of its technology systems

Around 1,200 employees stationed at three of the military alliance's facilities in Germany and the Netherlands are set to benefit from the investment, which will see a brand new IT system installed for the use of administration and support staff.

As part of Project 24, Nato is also investing a range of hardware, such as workstations and laptops, as well as storage systems, which could prove invaluable should the organisation have to implement a disaster recovery policy.

Underling the wide range of organisations that are outsourcing to help ensure that their IT needs are met, Nato has chosen Eads Defence and Security to carry out the work.

It is hoped that the new system could help Nato better organise its financial reporting processes so it can comply with the International Public Sector Accounting Standards regulations by 2010.

A Nato report said recently that currently "there is no standard server availability criteria established" at its facilities across the world.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'.