The Department of Defence has revealed to Intermedium that the value of its data centre lease with Global Switch – signed in July 2010 – is $37million (+ energy costs) over ten years.
Defence CIO Greg Farr has also confirmed a $550 million injection of funding into the Department’s ICT environment via the 2012-12 Budget, reports ZD Net. The money will supplement the $940 million originally provided to the Department in 2009 to overhaul the Defence Information Environment (DIE). Farr says that the full size of the job was underestimated when funding was first determined.
The Defence Materiel Organisation has spent a total of $35 million on a Network Control System from US satellite and digital communications provider ViaSat, across two recently published contracts (CN566432&CN567132).
The South Australian Government has extended its mainframe services contract with HP by three and a half years, at an additional cost of $33 million, reports ZD Net. The extension brings the full term of the contract to 11.5 years and its value over this term to $119 million. The contract will expire in May 2018, and the Government has confirmed that it will conduct an open approach the market at this stage.
Also in South Australia, The Australian has reported that expenditure on contractors and consultants by the State Government doubled to $445 million within the past financial year.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has approached the market to procure desktop computers and laptops under a three-year contract. According to tender documents, the ABC currently operates 4,300 Windows-based PCs; 1,300 Windows-based laptops; 230 Apple desktops and laptops; and 50 tablet computers.
The Courier Mail has reported that as many as 180 temporary IT staff working in the Queensland Department of Education will not have their contracts renewed once they expire on 30 June. The Newman Government is looking to find substantial savings across the public sector while sticking to its promise of no forced redundancies.
NSW Health has expanded capacity within its Liverpool data centre, taking clinical applications such as the electronic Medical Record (eMR) offline overnight to conduct the works. NSW Health will become one of two anchor tenants to move into two new data centres currently being built by Metronode for the use of the NSW Government.
The NSW Auditor-General’s annual review of the State’s universities shows that just 4.0 per cent of 2010 enrolments were in Information Technology degrees, compared to 27.1 per cent for management and commerce.
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