Operational Data and System-to-System Messaging Platforming - UK2 - Preliminary Market Engagement Notice

Network Rail currently operates two platforms (EMS Hub and LINX) that perform broadly similar roles in transporting operational data and enabling system‑to‑system messaging across the railway ecosystem. The EMS Hub has been in use since 2005 as a real‑time messaging platform serving Network Rail and industry partners across multiple business sectors. LINX, introduced in 2017, was initially designed to act as a linkage layer between newer train management services and legacy systems. Over time, both platforms have evolved in parallel, resulting in significant functional overlap, duplicated dataflows, and an unclear delineation of responsibilities between them.
LINX is a specialist platform for Traffic Management and operational railway data, providing controlled, resilient and standardised real‑time data exchange. EMS Hub is a flexible, enterprise integration platform supporting a wide range of business domains, including finance, maintenance, operational reporting and web services. Both EMS Hub and LINX provide real‑time messaging and data exchange between operational systems used to manage train movements, timetabling, maintenance, and performance reporting. Because the two platforms are built on the same underlying IBM MQ and IBM ACE technology stack (on-premises IBM zLinux technology), data is shared between them, with both systems exposing this data to external customers in real time. This results in:
- Duplicated data transmission, where systems feed separate dataflows into each platform.
- External consumers having to subscribe to both platforms to obtain a complete picture.
- Parallel technology footprints without a clear business rationale for maintaining two distinct platforms.
This duplication of external feeds has introduced unnecessary cost, complexity, and operational inefficiency. EMS Hub in particular has historically acted as the “default” integration layer and now supports a wide mix of operational, financial, and maintenance services. LINX,...