Australia Post terminated EDS contract

Australia Post is tight-lipped on the progress of its Microsoft infrastructure upgrade after it was revealed it terminated a contract with EDS after just five months.

The postal organisation has been planning to migrate 10,000 staff across the country from Windows NT 4.0 workstation and server platforms to XP Professional and Server 2003 since June last year. The project will also see Active Directory, Exchange 2003, SMS 2003, SQL 2003, and Citrix software installed at Post.

However, Post will not start the rollout until sometime next year following earlier trouble with EDS.

Post awarded the services giant a 12 month contract for the project in June last year, but terminated it five months later.

The contract was to plan and manage the upgrade of Post's desktop environment in subsequent project phases, according to EDS.

But the two organisations broke ties in November 2005.

"When Australia Post and EDS were nearing the end of the scoping and planning phase of the project, Australia Post decided to pursue a different approach and discontinued its work with EDS," an EDS spokesperson told ZDNet Australia.

Post subsequently signed integrator Avanade the next month for technical consulting for the same project.

"[Post] said 'we've changed our plans and we want to start at the beginning'," said Avanade business development director John Poole.

He said Post and Avanade were almost at the end of the detailed design phase. A pilot is scheduled to run during the first quarter of next year.

Avanade would not disclose the value of its contract.

Australia Post said CIO Wayne Saunders was not available for interview, and could not comment before time of publication despite repeated requests by ZDNet Australia.