New Zealand Government appoints IBM to Infrastructure as a Service panel

IBM has been appointed to the panel of suppliers to provide datacentre housing and hosting, utility computing, backup, storage and transition services to government agencies. The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) initiative is a key component of the government's ICT Roadmap and is designed to achieve greater productivity and value from the government’s ICT spend.

The agreement will be administered by the Department of Internal Affairs, and will run for 10 years, with an option to extend for another five years.

IBM will have the opportunity to provide a suite of services including IaaS to government agencies and departments who have signed on to the service.

IBM says government agencies which select IBM’s IaaS solution will have the opportunity to realise cost savings from a reduction in their operating expenses, especially as fixed costs convert to fully flexible costs through the ability to switch environments on and off quickly and by avoiding capital expenditure on servers, storage and data centre premises.

“IBM looks forward to working closely with the government agencies to provide datacentre services and ultimately support high quality experiences for New Zealanders using and accessing government services,”
says Jennifer Moxon, IBM New Zealand managing director.

All services will be available for consumption from IBM’s new $80 million datacentre at Highbrook Business Park and its datacentre at Petone.