Foodstuff producer and distributor Burns Philp has signed a three-year managed service contract with Brennan IT replacing incumbent IBM GSA.

Brennan IT will provide both onsite and remote IT support which includes 24x7 service desk and maintenance and monitoring of the entire IT infrastructure as well as secure Internet access, hosting and telecommunications.

The contract with IBM GSA was signed with Goodman Fielder before Burns Philp took over the company in 2003.

Greg Quirk, Burns Philp group financial controller and risk manager, said Brennan's understanding of the SMB space was an important factor in the decision to replace IBM GSA.

"With a user base of only 35 people we found that many providers would offer us the same services that they would a large organization and we found that these were not easily scaled down to our SMB size," Quirk said.

Brennan IT also signed up gas pipeline provider Australian Pipeline Trust (APT). Together the two signings are worth a total of $1.65 million.

Brennan IT will provide APT with IT infrastructure monitoring and support as well as a national IP WAN including a network-based firewall, spam filtering and anti-virus protection.

The IP WAN will link APT offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth as well as three offsite servers hosted by Brennan IT.

Matthew Lovegrove, Brennan IT sales and marketing general manager, said there's a switch by SMBs to the use of managed services as a way to reduce the cost and complexity of IT investments.

A spokesperson for IBM GSA directed all enquiries to Burns Philp.