Rio Tinto to expand network transformation to operational sites

Rio Tinto is in the midst of a three-year network transformation that has so far focused on its corporate network but will soon progress to operational environments such as its mines.

Rio Tinto's Remona Murugan.

Head of technology platforms Remona Murugan told Cisco Live 2023 in Melbourne that the transformation is about reducing technical debt and end-of-life assets, while also creating a foundation for the miner to achieve its digital ambitions.

“We have a dream of being a digital Rio Tinto,” Murugan said.

“When we agreed to do that and agreed on that vision, the role of technology in building a digital Rio Tinto became so much more critical.”

Murugan said that Rio Tinto had worked to reshape its IT operations, and upgrade its core platforms, in support of digital.

She indicated that when she joined in mid-2021, IT was viewed at least in part as a cost centre and potential constraint to transformation.

Considerable effort was invested to “rebrand” the technology function internally, communicating the breadth of its capabilities to executives, and generally improving perceptions of the value that technology investment created.

“As a [technology] team, we became stronger because we were successful and got the support and the investment,” Murugan said. “Now, we’re executing on that, so it was a great outcome.”

Network transformation is one of the funded activities, with Murugan saying that the miner had “landed on Cisco as part of our target state architecture”.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on the corporate infrastructure and the enterprise service so building out the backbone,” she said.

“Next for us is really expanding into the operational technology environment where we have some other challenges but it’s where the real value happens, it’s where we make money as a business.”

Accompanying the upgrade of network technology is a shift in operating model; Murugan said that to avoid the latest upgrades becoming future technical debt, the company is adopting a “continuous improvement” mindset.

Part of this means treating network components as products, not projects, which implies ongoing maintenance to keep the components current.

Murugan also briefly said the miner is adopting AIOps as tooling support for the new IT operations model.

Fewer partners

Murugan added that one of the impacts of Rio Tinto’s recent work is to slim down the number of technology partners it works with.

She noted that the miner still needed partners but that a smaller number was more operationally efficient.

“If we were running a critical incident 18 months ago, there would be 17 different people on the bridge [from different companies]. So, imagine how that goes,” she said.

“We’ve already started reducing the number of partners we have, and it’s critical to actually work as a cohesive team to deliver what you need to.

“It’s about how we look at the partnerships that we have and pick the right partners - fewer partners - to help accelerate our journey.”