DiData ramps up ACT involvement with $5.6m deal

DiData has signed a $5.6 million, five-year contract to supply, install and maintain switching equipment to a whole-of-government network for the ACT.

The Australian arm of South African integrator Dimension Data has signed a deal to supply, install and maintain Cisco Systems switching to the ACT government's new metropolitan data network.

Michael Gration, ACT state manager at Dimension Data, said the integrator was working on developing its business in Canberra.

The new deal built on a "very positive" previous relationship with the ACT's insourced computer and telecommunications agency InTACT, he said.

"We [will] contribute to an important shift in the ACT government's capacity to provide services to other government agencies and the community," Gration said.

Dimension Data has also entered into a five-year maintenance services contract with InTACT to support switching equipment in the ACT government network.
 
Michael Vanderheide, general manager at InTACT, said the new network was slated for completion September 2005. It was expected to help the ACT government save more than $20 million over 10 years.

The network would use about 14,000 switch ports and more than 100 routed VPN sites across the ACT. Cisco Catalyst switch architecture would connect some 13 core sites and 200 precinct sites via a private fibre link or routed broadband VPN WAN, InTACT said.

The ultimate aim was deploying a "fully converged" architecture over the next few years, delivering voice, video and data services over the one network infrastructure, InTACT said.

The current infrastructure has 490 servers, two computer centres, 820 network switches and routers, a full spectrum voice and ISDN network, high speed internet, three whole-of-government applications, 1500 local applications and manages 19TB of data, InTACT said.

InTACT employs 200 staff and contractors and has an annual operating budget of about $70 million, it said.