NEC shares the love with resellers in $55m NT contract win

Four resellers are in line for a public sector windfall after NEC scored a new contract with the Northern Territory government.

NEC has won a $55 million multi-year end-user compute contract, which expands on its recently expired four-year desktop and servers contract. The three-year contract, which has the option to extend a further two years, supports 20,000 end-users.

The contract includes business application support, project resources for the government and support visits to police stations, healthcare clinics and other government operations in remote communities. An NEC spokesperson told CRN the company will do 680 individual flights to remote communities a year.

Four IT companies in the Top End stand to win work off the back of the contract.

Vertical Technology Group will use its fleet of planes to fly NEC techs out to remote job sites across the Territory. VTG is a regular sub-contractor to NEC, and already provides similar services for NEC's $35 million NT education contract.

Red Centre Technology Partners will support government clients in its hometown of Alice Springs. The company rebranded last week, following its acquisition of Leading Edge Alice Springs.

Two more Leading Edge outfits will also support NEC.

Katherine-based Leading Edge business NT Technology will support users in Nhulunbuy and Katherine, while NEC has also outsourced Tennant Creek support to that town's Leading Edge branch.

The NEC spokesperson said it was really important to share the love with local businesses rather than use fly-in, fly-out support, which "frustrated" smaller, local players.

NEC and its NT-based partners recently held a fundraiser for the Starlight Foundation in Darwin, where they helped raise $10,000.

Kevin Grey, chief executive of NT Technology, said: "Our goal is to leverage the remote advantage and use it to support the rest of our business and hopefully get into some emerging markets."

He added that his company would work closely with Leading Edge counterparts in Tennant Creek and Alice Springs.

Under its previous contract, NEC deployed 8,000 new desktops and laptops and ran a government-wide Windows XP upgrade, helping migrate the NT government's fleet of 16,500 workstations to Windows 7.

The NT win consolidates NEC's run of success with state governments, after it ousted Dimension Data from a $70 million South Australian account.