In April, Sydney Water went out to tender for help with its burgeoning business intelligence (BI) program, and it identified data associated with its water quality and hydraulics monitoring operations as early project priorities.
A spokesperson for the utility yesterday told ZDNet Australia the contract had been awarded to Business Objects. In April it was revealed services consultancy Oakton had also been engaged to help with the programme.
The contract was hotly contested, with Business Objects beating out some of Australia's largest IT services firms, including IBM, Fujitsu and KAZ. Around 20 different groups applied for the work.
Sydney Water provides drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services to four million Sydney, Blue Mountains and Illawarra residents. The organisation has over 3,500 staff.
Initial data volumes for the BI project are expected to be around 800Gb.
The spokesperson also said Sydney Water was still considering offers for another, much larger contract put on the market in early July.
That deal will cover products and services to support Sydney Water's extensive leased IT fleet, which includes at least 4,000 PCs and notebooks, 512 printers and 284 servers.
Those devices are currently owned by Macquarie Bank and provided under lease arrangements designed to minimise risk, with Dell's managed services division providing services for the assets. These two contracts will be consolidated into a single arrangement to take effect from 1 January 2007.
Although some 40-50 individuals representing local IT suppliers attended a 7 July briefing on the contract at Sydney Water's Bathurst St, Sydney HQ, only Hewlett Packard, IBM, Dell and ADNet Technology submitted offers for the contract.
Sydney Water's chief information officer Tim Gatby declined to be interviewed.
