iiNet subsidiary Internode has been awarded a contract to deliver cloud services to the South Australian departments of premier and cabinet, planning, transport and infrastructure (DPTI) and communities and social inclusion (DCSI).
According to iiNet, agreements with other agencies will be completed over time.
The contract was awarded following the SA government’s cloud services policy (PDF) which was announced in April this year.
The policy was developed to ensure that government agencies evaluate cloud services in every new or reformed ICT sourcing, procurement, or market approach.
The ISP will offer infrastructure-as-a-service and backup-as-a-service. This will reduce the need for agencies to use servers, licences, software and data centres.
SA public sector minister Susan Close said the SA gCloud strategy will allow agencies to invest in services rather than buying hardware and software.
“This solution improves agility for state government agencies with no upfront costs and provides the ability to spin up or shut down servers as required in minutes instead of months. Consumption-based pricing requires no minimum spend,” she said in a statement.
According to Close, the SA gCloud will meet security requirements through a dedicated hardware platform hosted in Adelaide and contained within the state’s central data network.
“This avoids the need for data to travel across the Internet and benefits from data security controls already in place.”
Internode has an existing relationship with the SA government. It has been delivering whole-of-government Internet services for 20 years.
In June, the SA government said it will seek expressions of interest from the private sector for the revamp of government ICT systems.
The government spends around $260 million on cross-government ICT every year.
A statement issued by the government said that the expression of interest process will increase that amount by $100 million.
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