Dell EMC has received a $7.74 million, five-year contract from Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection for the upgrade of its storage infrastructure.
According to a Department spokesperson, the storage system upgrade is part of the government entity’s capital investment program, which routinely replaces end of life IT infrastructure.
This particular purchase from Dell EMC is expected to improve the Department’s ability to support its mission critical applications.
The deal comes as the Department works to expand its archive storage systems to cope with expected growth in data volumes.
Specifically the contract itself, which names EMC Global as the winning tenderer, was procured via the Department of Finance’s information and communication technology (ICT) services commercial off the shelf (COTS) software and hardware procurement panel.
The panel, which claims 40 suppliers, including ASG Group, Data#3, SMS Management & Technology and Dell Australia, was established in 2012, prior to Dell’s acquisition of EMC.
While the storage upgrade deal awarded to Dell EMC is relatively minor by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s usual standards, it comes as the Department launches itself headlong into a number of high profile IT projects.
In September, the Federal Government said it was on the hunt for an external supplier to build a new ‘Global Digital Platform’ as part of a move to increase the outsourcing of Australia’s visa processing operations.
In a request for expression of interest published on 22 September, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection called on suppliers to pitch on new visa delivery services, stating that the procured services would help support the Government’s priority of “strong national security”.
As part of this initiative, the Federal Government previously handed Portuguese automated border control and electronic identity solutions provider, Vision-Box, a contract worth around $22.7 million for the provision of automated processing technology for Australia’s airports.
Since then, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has dished out a $77.7 million, three-year contract extension to Unisys for the provision of managed end-user computing and infrastructure support services.
In August, the Department also handed out a $28.9 million deal to Teradata for the provision of data warehouse services.
Under the terms of that multi-year contract, Teradata is providing software, hardware and professional services for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s enterprise data warehouse capability.
