The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has chosen Optus over Dimension Data for its managed network services contract, which the agency has said is worth around $60.5 million a year.
The ATO said in a statement this morning that it was currently in final negotiations with the telco on the five- to seven-year contract, which includes the provision of data and voice carriage services, video-conferencing services and call centre infrastructure.
"We expect to complete our contract negotiations in the coming weeks and will provide more information on the contract after that point," ATO second commissioner David Butler said.
Out of seven responses to its expression of interest last January, the Tax Office shortlisted Optus, Telstra, Dimension Data and CSC. After workshops looking at potential solutions for managed network services, it dropped Telstra and CSC from the process. The contract was one of three replacing the office's whole-of-agency contract with incumbent EDS.
The ATO decided to break up EDS' stranglehold on the agency's IT contracts following internal reviews by Boston Consulting Group, breaking its whole-of-agency deal into a managed network services contract, an end-user computing contract and a centralised computing contract.
The end-user computing tender, which covers the ATO's mobile device management, IT service desk, service management and printer management, closed in the middle of this month, according to the ATO.
CSC Australia, HP-owned EDS, recent Fujitsu acquisition Kaz Group, Lockheed Martin and Unisys were in the race for the ATO's $60 million per year deal, the agency had said in March. The ATO expected a contract to be in place by March 2010.
The $160 million per year centralised computing deal whittled down to Lockheed Martin, CSC, IBM and incumbent supplier EDS last September, and is scheduled to move ahead in July, with a request for tender sent out to shortlisted bidders, the Tax Office said.
The ATO expected a contract to be in place by the middle of next year.
"ATO fingers Optus..."
Suzanne!