Australia’s Department of Defence has served up more than $41 million worth of software and tech deals to Microsoft, Data#3 and Leidos.
The contracts include a $25.48 million deal with Data#3 for the provision of Microsoft agency enterprise enrolment and server cloud enrolment, a $7.4 million contract for Leidos Australia for computer equipment and accessories, and an $8.3 million deal for Microsoft for software support.
Details of the three deals, which were procured by the Department of Defence’s Chief Information Officer Group (CIOG) – the entity responsible for the Department’s integrated Single Information Environment – were published earlier this month. The contracts themselves, however, run from July this year.
To meet its organisational objectives, a number of business areas and projects within CIOG have a requirement for premier support services from Microsoft to provide remediation, integration and ongoing security of the Defence IT environment, a Defence spokesperson told ARN.
The Data#3 deal stems from the terms of the Department of Finance’s whole-of-government Microsoft Volume Sourcing Arrangement, under which the Department of Defence is required to pay for software maintenance on its fleet of Microsoft Agency Enterprise Enrolment (AEE) software licences.
This payment is made on an annual basis at the beginning of the financial year for 12 months of software support to Data#3 as the nominated Large Account Reseller (LAR) for Microsoft, the spokesperson said.
Data#3 is the preferred Microsoft LAR and was appointed by the then-Department of Finance under the Microsoft Channel Partner Arrangement for all Federal Government agencies.
The cost for Software Assurance for AEE products is $10,314,480, including GST, for the 2017–18 financial year.
Meanwhile, the Server Cloud Enrolment (SCE) component of the deal is a new enrolment under the Microsoft Volume Sourcing Arrangement that enables agencies to standardise on one or more Microsoft Server and Cloud technologies.
The total cost of entering into the second year – the 2017-18 financial year – of the SCE is $15,159,553.
The $8.3 million deal for Microsoft for software support, meanwhile, is a thre
e-year contract running until 22 June 2020. The $8.3 million reflects three years of premier support coverage for Defence, the spokesperson said.
At the same time, the $7.4 million contract awarded to Leidos is associated with the $700 million agreement Lockheed Martin Australia inked with Defence in 2014 to supply centralised processing services until 2022.
In September last year, following its acquisition of Lockheed’s Information Systems and Global Solutions (IS&GS) business, Leidos mopped up the remainder of the Defence contractor’s agreement with the Department of Defence.
The latest $7.4 million purchase order dished out to Leidos Australia for centralised processing relates to two Contract Change Proposals (CCPs), in accordance with the provisions within the larger contract.
This include an update to The End User Computing (EUC) Bill of Materials (BOM), at a cost of $941,802.83, and relates to hardware and software maintenance requirements identified through the EUC Detailed Design Review.
It also includes an application of the Annual Inflation Adjustment to labour component costs in accordance with ABS Labour Price Index, at a cost of $6,475,984.37.
The Department of Defence is one of the Federal Government’s biggest spenders on externally procured IT services.
In November last year, the Department revealed a strategic plan to spend $20 billion on IT over a 10-year period, while outlining how it intends to undertake its ongoing technology overhaul to 2020.
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