Western Australia's Department of Health to spend AU$124m on hybrid cloud shift
The Western Australian Department of Health has announced it will be adopting a hybrid cloud model for the state public health system's IT infrastructure.
For a cost of AU$124 million over five years, Atos will be transitioning the current legacy infrastructure to its cloud platforms, working with the WA health system's IT service provider, Health Support Services (HSS).
"The HealthNext transition program represents an opportunity to improve the way WA Health utilises and delivers ICT services to support the provision of healthcare to the WA community," HSS CIO Holger Kaufmann said.
"A modern and contemporary cloud-based ICT system will enable us to respond better to innovation that will help improve patient care and reduce unnecessary duplication."
The scope of services, Atos explained, is to provide "private cloud, managed public cloud, hybrid cloud orchestration, co-location, and managed services for 2,000 servers, over 1,000 applications, and a fully-managed Oracle Cloud platform".
Atos is one of three providers signed under the government of Western Australia's GovNext-ICT initiative, alongside NEC and Datacom, to provide IT infrastructure to service the entire state government for five years.
The agreements, signed in January 2017, are expected to save the state AU$60-80 million in IT infrastructure expenditure annually.
Under the arrangement, all government agencies purchase IT infrastructure through one contract, with the three vendors continuously competing with each other to sell their services.
"We expect innovation to thrive under this arrangement through the stimulation of local industry, which in turn will ensure diversity of supply," WA Minister for State Development; Transport; Innovation cum Minister for Shadow Minister for Mines and Petroleum; Innovation and Disruptive Technologies; Defence Issues; Science Bill Marmion said previously.
"The GovNext-ICT contract enables agencies to have access to the latest and greatest technological offerings to assist with improving their online service delivery presence."
The goals of GovNext-ICT are to simplify IT procurement, increase competition, and drive value through economies of scale, as well as to deliver a "secure connected, stable, and reliable government ICT environment as the foundation for digital citizen services and data analytics".
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