Immigration seeks mainframe, end-user support
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has gone to market for vendors to replace two major contracts for mainframe and end-user help-desk services.
Since 2005, the department has been sourcing mainframe and mid-range services from CSC, service desk, secure gateway and end-user computing services from Unisys, and telecommunications services from Optus.
The department recently extended a contract with Optus for another two years to September 2014, but the contracts with Unisys and CSC run out on 30 June 2013, and are unable to be extended.
The department is now looking for a vendor to provide:
Mainframe services
Mid-range equipment services
End-user computing services
Service-desk services
Service-management services
Professional services.
This excludes secure gateway services, which it is sourcing with Customs, as directed by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO). AGIMO is pushing agencies towards whole-of-government procurement to increase purchasing power and lower costs.
The department supports 9200 personnel at 40 offices offshore, and 1200 personnel in over 60 locations overseas. The department manages 30,000 pieces of equipment, including:
10,500 desktop PCs and monitors
1750 laptops
1100 printers
430 scanners and faxes
350 multifunction devices (MFDs) — Fuji Xerox
360 virtual Windows servers (180 physical servers).
The department has been using Windows XP since 2004, but has been upgrading to Windows 7. This upgrade is expected to be finished by the end of the year. The current Lotus Domino email environment is changing to Microsoft Exchange.
The department has datacentres in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra running mainframe services and Unix and Wintel servers. It has an IBM z-series mainframe running border-management systems using a Hitachi Data Systems Storage Area Network data-storage device. Its mid-range application services host business systems, database-management systems and application infrastructure services on IBM AIX, Windows 2003/08 and Redhat Linux. Most of the windows and Linux environments are virtualised using VMware.