The South Australian Government has extended its existing agreement with Hewlett-Packard for the provision of mainframe computing services.

 

Minister for the Public Sector, Michael O’Brien, said this will ensure access to the capability required to run critical applications used by most South Australian Government agencies including the Justice Information System, Police Offender Information and some accounting, HR and payroll systems.

 

Under the “platform-as-a-service” arrangement, HP owns the infrastructure and operating system licences and the government owns and manages the applications that run on the mainframe.

 

“This agreement sees the government gain the operational and performance benefits associated with new infrastructure without having to purchase, own, maintain and manage that infrastructure,” Mr O’Brien said.

 

“By spreading the costs over a longer period this new extension, which will expire in May 2018, will achieve approximately $3.1 million in savings over the next six years.”

 

The rapid expansion of the usage of mainframe computing by the state's major agencies saw an expansion of the original project. The $119 million extension of the project with HP will be due to last 11 years.