Defence awards $800m centralised processing deal

The Department of Defence has handed a team of vendors including Lockheed Martin Australia and NEC Australia an $800 million contract to provide centralised processing infrastructure and services.

Lockheed Martin has been selected to lead the project, which aims to consolidate Defence’s infrastructure and applications to improve the efficiency and overall effectiveness of the department’s data centres.

“Centralised processing will deliver a smaller number of more reliable and resilient data centres, from within 280 data centres to 11 domestically and three internationally,” Defence CIO Dr Peter Lawrence said.

“It will improve the availability, reliability and security of Defence’s computer processing capability.”

NEC Australia’s slice of the contracts will be worth $150 million. The company will provide technical and monitoring support to Defence and Lockheed Martin Australia, and take responsibility for maintaining the stability and efficiency of Defence systems.

During the transition period, NEC’s operations team will assume responsibility for Defence’s business-as-usual infrastructure, including mid-range servers and storage systems. The company will also assist with the re-hosting of applications in the new consolidated facilities.

The department selected Lockheed Martin as the preferred tenderer for the transformation project in April.

Image courtesy of Lockheed Martin.