NZ Government awards IaaS work

The New Zealand Government has appointed Datacom and Revera to underpin an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product available to at least eight agencies.

The two IT services firms were selected from a shortlist of four announced in April that also included IBM and Gen-i.

IBM could still be selected to provide services under the program, according to a report by Computerworld New Zealand.

Acting CEO for the Department of Internal Affairs Peter Mersi expected IaaS to save the Government between $50 million and $250 million over the next decade.

"Infrastructure as a service is a huge achievement that will save the taxpayer millions while providing government with leading edge technology," Mersi said.

"This is just the beginning – we'll be seeing more initiatives like this rolled out in the next 12 months."

Mersi said that Government IaaS was the "first step towards government cloud computing" in the country.

The initial IaaS project covered hosted server and storage capacity.

Mersi foreshadowed an "increasing range of services" to be provided using an on-demand model.

The NZ Government said last December that the IaaS concept "will deliver a shared cross-government approach to core and common computing needs, including a pay-as-you-go approach for central computer servers, processing and data storage, at the appropriate security level to protect the information",

It was developed by the Department of Internal Affairs and Ministry of Economic Development in consultation with the departments of Conservation, Inland Revenue, Land Information New Zealand, the Ministry of Social Development, the New Zealand Defence Force, the New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Transport Agency.

Other agencies are expected to adopt the IaaS services "over time".

Revera general manager business development Robin Cockayne said that the company's focus on "delivering infrastructure dial tone put it at the industry forefront at the right time".

"We've stuck to our knitting, refined our services platform, and substantially expanded through the establishment of a local data centre network and development of management controls and workflow automation delivering on-demand infrastructure and platform services," Cockayne said immediately after the Government's announcement.

The IaaS program is part of a broader ICT roadmap launched in August.