Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

IBM secures Westpac deal despite doubts

Late last year, Westpac CEO, Gail Kelly, suggested the contract with IBM would not be renewed

IBM has secured a five-year deal with the Westpac Group for the supply of infrastructure services as the major bank continues its technology transformation.

The agreement follows doubts from Westpac chief executive, Gail Kelly late last year about whether the decade-long relationship would continue as mainstream opinion on IT outsourcing models moved from decade-long mega-deals toward a best-of-breed approach over shorter timeframes.

Under the deal, officially signed on 19 November this year, IBM will be responsible for operating the bank’s services related to its new data centre, mainframe, midrange, storage, desktop, print and security operations and will focus on service quality for bank staff and customers, with the aim of lowering risk, increasing cost control and supporting Westpac’s business.

Westpac Group group executive of technology, Bob McKinnon, said the company was pleased to continue its relationship with IBM throughout the IT overhaul.

According to McKinnon, IBM has worked closely with Westpac over the past two years to improve its system reliability and service, with the new agreement continuing that relationship.

The new contract comes as IBM lost out on a tender for the Australian Taxation Office's (ATO) centralised computing project, which was instead awarded to HP Enterprise Services.

The ATO had shortlisted both HP and IBM, ultimately choosing the former as the preferred supplier.

The contract will include the provision, management and support services for the mainframe, midrange, data warehouse, storage and secure gateway, and also the provision of data centres, data centre networks and facilities management.

The ATO released an Expression of Interest (EOI) on 30 June 2008, and shortlisted four organisations including IBM, Lockheed Martin, CSC Australia and HP (formerly EDS Australia).

HP will continue to provide centralised computing services until the transition phase is complete, sometime in June 2012.

As reported by Computerworld Australia’s the ATO’s IT systems Change Program recently resulted in a number of Centrelink customers having their Family Tax Benefit (FTB) payments suspended as it affected the ATO’s ability to advise Centrelink that it had received tax returns.

Follow Chloe Herrick on Twitter: @chloe_CW

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAu

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Australian Taxation Office, Centrelink, CSC, EDS, Hewlett-Packard, HP, IBM, IBM Australia, Lockheed Martin, Westpac, Westpac
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: ATO, change program, IBM, infrastructure, westpac
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Get the Whole Picture Why Most Organizations Miss User Response Monitoring—and What to Do About It
    You can be armed with vast amounts of performance metrics, but if you don’t know what users are actually experiencing, you don’t have the real performance picture. While this measure is critical, it is one many organizations fail to consistently capture. This guide looks at the challenges of user response monitoring, and it shows how you can overcome these challenges and start to get a real handle on your infrastructure performance and how it impacts your users’ experience.
    Learn more »
  • Stopping Fake Antivirus: How to Keep Scareware off Your Network
    This paper provides insight into where fake antivirus comes from and how it is distributed, what happens when a system is infected with fake antivirus, and how to stop this persistent threat from infecting your network and your users.
    Learn more »
  • Guidance for Calculation of Efficiency (PUE) in Data Centers
    The benefits of determining data center infrastructure efficiency as part of an effective energy management plan are widely recognised. The standard metrics of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and its reciprocal Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency1 (DCIE) have emerged as recognised standards. This paper defines a standard approach to collecting data from data centers and showing how to use it to calculate PUE, with a focus on what to do with data that is confusing or incomplete.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments