Qld Govt launches cloud infrastructure panel

The Queensland Government has signed the first three suppliers to its whole-of-government infrastructure-as-a-service panel.

Microsoft, Brisbane-based data centre provider Digital Sense and fellow south-east Queenslander NewBase are the first to have inked contracts with the state. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Science, IT, Innovation and the Arts confirmed more contracts are still being negotiated with additional prospective members. The panel will continue through to 17 June 2016. 

The state began fielding expressions of interest from industry late last year, for a panel covering the provision of public cloud services up to the operating system layer, plus optional managed services.

The suppliers will be expected to offer self service system management through customer portals for agency customers.

“The infrastructure-as-a-service panel arrangement allows agencies to avoid purchasing infrastructure altogether and giving them greater flexibility to buy scalable processing capability,” IT Minister Ian Walker said in a statement.

“This means agencies incur less maintenance costs, and they only paying for what they use, while getting access to the latest technology."

The panel and its endorsed suppliers will pave the way for Queensland agencies to pick up cloud solutions, now that they are obliged to select cloud based solutions ‘by default’ under the state’s recently launched cloud first policy.

The Queensland Government has already renegotiated its state-wide licensing deal with Microsoft to allow agencies to migrate to the Office 365 suite under the conditions of the agreement.

Agencies are also due to have submitted their ICT roadmaps outlining their transition to "ICT-as-a-service" buying models to DSITIA, which the department said indicates a number of agencies are planning to switch to cloud email.