NSW picks providers for cloud proof of concept

After announcing its intention to move its services to the cloud earlier this year, the NSW government has selected the first few companies that are willing to take up the challenge of providing a proof of concept of the services.

In February, the NSW Minister for Finance and Services Greg Pearce announced a trial of five cloud projects, two of which included delivering messaging as a service and desktop as a service. Both calls to the market were for a trial of 100 accounts on each, with the ability to further scale to over 30,000 desktops across 300 sites.

The messaging component of the trials will be conducted by Unisys and Fronde, and incorporate a "Google-based" system. The desktop component will be delivered by Hewlett-Packard.

"Multiple cloud-based systems will be tested across different scenarios and environments to ensure they are cost effective, secure, and efficient," Pearce said in a statement.

The trial is expected to run for three months.

The announcement of the proof-of-concept providers comes a day after Pearce was criticised for allegedly running from the media after having just returned from a month of leave.

Prior to his leave, Pearce was under scrutiny after it was found that the minister made private travel arrangements on taxpayer's dollars. Prior to that, Pearce had been accused of being drunk during parliamentary debates.