ISI will support and manage the Department of Defence’s mainframe environment under an eight-year contract worth $31 million. Lockheed Martin Australia awarded ISI the contract, which is part of Defence’s massive data centre consolidation program.
The Centralised Processing Project will be managed by Lockheed Martin and involves consolidating Defence’s data centres from 280 to 14 (11 on-shore and three overseas).
"By consolidating Defence's infrastructure and applications, Defence can deliver more resilient, scalable ICT facilities, reducing duplication and delivering significant savings," the department's outline of the project states.
Overall, the project will be worth $800 million over eight years.
HP, IBM and Lockheed Martin all submitted tenders for the project. HP was knocked out in September 2013, and Lockheed Martin was announced as the preferred tenderer in May this year.
ISI is one of eight companies that will work with Lockheed Martin on the project. Others include ASG and NEC Australia.
“The partnership will deliver Defence with a robust and secure technology environment, while creating greater efficiencies; simplifying our service provision and speeding up our response to change,” Defence CIO Dr Peter Lawrence said.
ISI is looking to recruit an additional 23 staff to support the contract. The company currently has more than 30 mainframe specialists.