IBM nabs $99m Transport for NSW deal

Transport for NSW has officially signed IBM as the key provider in its next-generation infrastructure services (NGIS) overhaul, yesterday revealing that the deal will be worth $99 million.

IBM was earlier this year selected as the preferred tenderer for the five-year NGIS outsourcing project, one of three new bundles of work the department has created under its new "next-generation" sourcing scheme.

As a number of agency-based infrastructure deals drew to a close last year, the department siezed the opportunity to break up the monolithic contracts and replace them with a reformed buying strategy.

It repackaged the work into three contracts - data centre, end user computing, and networks.

The infrastructure contract is the first of the three to be signed. NEC has been down-selected as Transport for NSW's end-user partner and is expected to sign a deal before the end of the year. The network outsourcing contract will be signed early next year.

Under the infrastructure deal, IBM will consolidate and migrate 3000 servers and four petabytes of data from the agency's disparate fleet of 20 data centres and computer rooms into one of the NSW Government's 'GovDC' facilities.

For end-user computing, Transport for NSW will put NEC in charge of 25,000 desktop PCs and up to 10,000 mobile devices, as well as a new single collaboration platform to be rolled out across the cluster.

The networking bundle of work will see existing legacy networks replaced by a single data and telecommunications network. A voice/mobile vendor will likely be signed in January 2015, with a managed network services vendor to follow in April 2015.

Transport for NSW has previously estimated that its infrastructure renewal will cost around $150 million up front and $100 million in operating costs each year following.

The agency has been contacted for comment.