Oracle and partner Red Rock Consulting have bagged a AU$10 million, two-year support deal for the Department of Defence's personnel management system, PMKeyS.

Red Rock -- UXC Limited's Oracle services company -- will provide operational support, maintenance services and system change projects for PMKeyS. Oracle will also be on hand to provide additional support.

Based on PeopleSoft software, PMKeyS is the core HR system for Defence and manages payments to around 20,000 staff. Defence currently uses PeopleSoft HRMS version 7, and PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal and CRM (both version 8.9).

The handover of PMKeyS from Defence to Red Rock will occur over the next seven weeks. This will be followed by 24 months of on-site support, including incident and problem management and monthly management reporting, UXC said in a statement.

Red Rock will also handle system change requests including development, testing and management into the production system.

UXC chairman Geoff Lord told ZDNet Australia he expected the deal to eventually extend beyond the initial two years.

"There will probably be ongoing support for five years ... there's still some things that need to be clarified [with Defence]," he said.

This extended period would cover initial and ongoing support, according to Lord, and the value of the deal would increase accordingly.