Defence 'market tests' Oracle providers

Australia’s major Defence intelligence agencies will shortly move to a new direct-source relationship for their Oracle-based hardware, software and services.

See more Australian Defence coverage.

According to Defence documents, by moving to a new sourcing arrangement, affiliated agencies of the Australian Defence Intelligence Group (DIG) will be able to “market test their current support, maintenance and acquisition arrangements for their inventory of Oracle hardware and associated system software products.”

The agencies — Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation (DIGO), Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) — have some 1000 Oracle/Sun SPARC and x86-based servers in use.

Most of these servers are based in the Russell Offices precinct in Canberra, with a smaller number located in Geraldton in Western Australia, Darwin and Bendigo in Victoria. As a result, the new partner would likely have offices based in Canberra, Perth, Darwin and Melbourne.

Despite some questions hanging over the future of the Solaris operating system, Defence said the ability to supply and support Solaris — including the provision of Solaris named releases, associated patches and updates — would be a decisive factor in selecting its new provider.

Defence also flagged that likely future hardware and software procurements would include Sun Global Desktop, Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition, Oracle Web and Proxy servers, Santricity and Veritas Filesystem (VxFS).

Integration work around the agencies’ UNIX-based software and hardware is also on the cards.

This week, Defence also announced it would shortly commence its Centralised Processing (CP) initiative to establish a single, integrated capability for the management and provision of centralised processing facilities, infrastructure and services at the unclassified, classified and secret levels.

The initiative seeks to achieve a major reduction in capital expenditure and operating costs through the introduction of less expensive ICT infrastructure, the rationalisation and standardisation of ICT infrastructure, the consolidation of data centres, and the simplification of Defence’s ICT management environment.

Late last week, Defence R&D received $13 million in funding to foster projects submitted under the Department of Defence’s research and development program.

The Defence Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) Program, is managed by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and aimed at the Australian and New Zealand industry.

Follow Tim Lohman on Twitter: @Tlohman

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

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