The State Services Commission (SSC) in New Zealand has chosen IBMas its preferred supplier of network management and servicedelivery for the Government Shared Network.
The network will provide an easy and reasonably-priced route forgovernment agencies to communicate among their own offices and toshare data with other GSN users.
Three “strong contenders” were short-listed, says the SSC’s ICTdeputy commissioner Laurence Millar. All were “assessed as capableof delivering the required services”, he says. No one should bethought of as “losing” the deal, rather “IBM came through as thebest of a good bunch”, he says.
TelstraClear was rumored to be another of the contenders for thesecontracts and some industry sources were looking to an award inthat direction as a competition-balancing move against thedominance of Telecom.
The network management and service delivery functions are majorportions of a tender that was split into 18 sub-projects. Winnersof other sub-projects include Asnet, Kaon Technologies, Datacom,BCL, CityLink, Vector Communications, FX Networks, DTS and Revera(formerly HDS New Zealand). Like IBM, these organizations are alsopreferred suppliers subject to contract finalization.