IBM signs $342 million IT Head Agreement with Defence

IBM has won its largest contract with the Department of Defence to date, a $342 million Head Agreement covering both hardware and software.

The contract will cover some of the core requirements of the Defence IT environment through to September 2016.

“The 5-year IBM Head Agreement for Hardware and Software supports major Defence Systems including our Personnel, Finance and Military Logistics systems and Defence Information Communications Technology Reform Initiatives, including Service Oriented Architecture, Single Secure Desktop and Data Centre Migration and Consolidation,” said a spokesperson for the Department.

The Services Oriented Architecture project is concerned with providing “reusable, granular, modular and interoperable services” across the Defence infrastructure, to allow the Department to introduce cost-saving centralised support services.

The Single Secure Desktop project aims to assist those personnel who need to use multiple PCs in order to access multiple security classification levels. The Department is looking to deploy multi-level information-sharing across these security domains.

Through the Data Centre Migration and Centralised Processing projects, Defence is consolidating its fleet of more than 200 data centre facilities down to less than ten.

Although listed as two-contracts, worth $311 million and $31 million respectively, Defence advises that these contracts together form a single agreement that has been split due to internal accounting considerations.

It is just another of the dividends that IBM is enjoying as a result of its long-term relationship with Defence. In 2008, Defence renewed its Enterprise Licence Agreement with IBM at a value of $269 million over five years.

IBM is also one of five suppliers to have been appointed to Defence’s Applications Managed Services Partnership Agreement (AMSPA), which is set to take charge of all major systems integration work undertaken at the Department.

According to Intermedium’sAnalyse IT tool, Defence signed $76 million worth of contracts with IBM in 2010-11. In 2009-10, the figure for the year was $93 million.

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