IBM renews $109 million DoHA deal

IBM has renewed a $109 million contract with the Federal Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) to provide a range of services.

This includes mainframe, mid-range, storage, help desk and end user computing services. In addition, Big Blue will now also provide new security compliance solutions and will conduct mainframe and storage upgrades. Perhaps the most interesting part of the new agreement will be the included rollout of a desktop virtualisation platform to all of DoHA’s 4,500-odd staff. IBM and DoHA have had a long-running relationship dating back to 1999.

“Commencing in the first half of 2011, IBM will deploy a virtualised thin client desktop solution across the entire department, enabling the movement of staff and workloads at a moment’s notice, whilst lowering technology support costs and increasing network performance,” IBM’s statement said.

It is not immediately clear what technology the virtual desktops will be based on.