HP grabs Defence contracts

Hewlett Packard has signed two deals with the Department of Defence worth a total of $36 million.

The vendor will supply the department with hardware at a cost of $26 million, and will be ready for testing by April 2007.

HP will also provide services for the design and rollout a standard operating environment (SOE) across 124 sites at a cost of $10 million, until November 2006.

This rollout, dubbed the "SOE 124" project refers to the migration of Defence’s network operating system from NT4 to MS Exchange Server 2003 and will deliver Outlook 2003 and Office 2003 onto desktops.

In a written statement to CRN, Defence confirmed HP won both contracts through a tender process.

“Request for tenders were issued to thirteen companies in 2004 for the supply, delivery and commissioning of a high performance system. A competitive tender was released in 2005 for SOE125 related services.

“Six responses were received and evaluated, this evaluation formed the basis on which the $26 million contract was awarded to HP,” stated Defence.

HP declined to comment for the story.