The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority today said it had found a new supplier, Lenovo, for its desktops and laptops following the demise of incumbent vendor Optima.
The RTA will look to Lenovo to help climb out of the desktop ditch it has been left in as a result of its current desktop supplier, Optima, going into administration.
"We have already started discussions with Lenovo last week and met with the managing director, who has given an ongoing commitment to support us through this period," acting chief information officer of the RTA, John Thomas, told ZDNet.com.au today.
The decision by the RTA comes as it attempts to reclaim $1.5 million from Optima.
According to Thomas, the claim of debt lodged with Optima's administrators by the RTA was due to outstanding warranties on some of the 5,000 desktops and laptops it had acquired from Optima over the past three years.
The RTA inked a deal with Optima in 2006 to supply its desktops and laptops, which was due to end this year.
"There is a whole range of warranty issues with the demise of Optima and in our case it's nearly all of our fleet," Thomas said.
"We have a significant number of devices, some of which are getting to the end of their life, while others have just started their time," he said.
Thomas said the RTA had begun exploring alternative suppliers last year when the NSW government introduced a government-wide procurement plan under the ITS 2007 initiative, which contains a list of approved PC suppliers, one of which is Lenovo.
Despite the arrangement with Lenovo, there was still significant work to be done to standardise the computers on the RTA's operating environment, said Thomas.
"We have to build the SOE (standard operating environment) for [Lenovo's] PCs, which we are currently doing. And once we've done that, we will sit down with them and work out a program to roll them out," he said.
Thomas is acting in the CIO position while the RTA's permanent CIO, Greg Carvouni, is on extended leave.
