Local resellers score spots on whole-of-govt hardware panel

The Department of Finance has added 10 new suppliers to the federal government’s reinvigorated mandatory IT hardware procurement panel.

The third round of suppliers sees HP and NEC return to the panel after the whole-of-government panel was reworked in September.

Local resellers added in the latest addition includes APCD, ACT Logistics, Allbids.com.au, Wilson and Gilkes, ISI, MCR Computer Resources, Secure Bits and Server Racks Australia.

The latest addition brings the total number of suppliers to 29, joining existing first-round panellists Acer, Dell, Ethan Group, Mac1 and Samsung.

Data#3, Datacom, Greenbox Systems, Fujitsu, Lenovo and NTT Communications were all appointed in the second round panel in October.

Former panellists Staples and UXC Connect are yet to return to the exclusive hardware buying regime. Further announcements will be made in the coming weeks.

[See the full list of suppliers here]

Federal government agencies must buy hardware from one of the panel vendors, who have agreed to special pricing provisions in exchange for membership on the panel. This includes desktops, PCs, notebooks, tablets, virtual desktops and monitors. Agreements run until 30 June 2018, with options to extend for up to three periods of 12 months each.

Resellers can also sell support services, servers and server racks through the panel.

The panel is credited with pulling the average price paid by the Commonwealth for computing devices down from 55 percent above the Australian benchmark to 50 percent below it.