HP to retain ATO centralised computing contract

HP Enterprise Services, formerly EDS, has picked up the Australian Tax Office’s (ATO) centralised computing contract.

The five-year deal includes mainframe, mid-range, data warehouse, storage, secure gateway and data centre services. EDS is the current supplier to the ATO with the same services.

“For the purposes of contract management efficiencies the ATO has elected to combine the final year of the existing HPES contract with the new HPES contract,” an ATO statement on the deal reads.

“This will give rise to a gazetted contract value which includes both the value of the final year of the existing contract plus the value of the new contract.”

The deal has been in the works for some time with the ATO briefing industry on the contract in April 2008, then moving to an expression of interest in June 2008.

CSC, EDS, IBM and Lockheed Martin Australia (LMA) were then shortlisted with the ATO proceeding to request for tender in October 2009. The tender closed on 25 February 2010.

According to the ATO, the centralised computing contract is one of three ICT sourcing bundles; the others being Managed Network Services — signed with Optus in June 2009 – and End-user Computing Services — signed with LMA in September 2010.

The ATO has also announced that it has made good on its promise to support Linux in its next-generation authentication software, dubbed AUSkey, with the reference distribution being Ubuntu with the Firefox Web browser.

In October the ATO said AUSkey for Linux would be available before the end of the year after fist announcing its intention to support the platform back in July.

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