Revealed: Big Blue, Dell and Data#3 dominate Canberra

Governments are Australia’s biggest buyers of IT products and services.

So CRN has decided to figure out just how big, to tabulate who’s buying what, and what impact that’s having on the channel. We've dug through the government's own records to provide a roundup of the biggest federal government contract winners.

In this first iteration of our efforts, we've assessed the biggest winners from 2018.

Our methodology is simple: we’ve used the AusTender website’s record of all government contracts awarded between January 1 and December 31, 2018, across four categories of deals most likely to record IT spend. Those four categories are information technology broadcasting and telecommunications; domestic appliances and supplies and consumer electronic products; electronic components and supplies; and engineering and research and technology-based services.

Then we did the math, adding up the value of contracts.

Our results aren’t definitive – AusTender doesn’t publish every contract in a timely fashion or force businesses to use the same name for every deal.

But we are confident these efforts produce a useful snapshot of the federal government’s IT spend and its impact on the CRN community.

And if you think we missed a deal, or your big win in Canberra, let us know by emailing crneditors@techpartner.news.

Let's start with wins by vendor, ranked by dollar value.

As the table shows, IBM was by far the biggest winner with $756.5 million. Guess the old adage "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" still holds up, as shown by its $1 billion whole-of-government supply deal struck in 2018.

In second and third was EMC and Dell, with $136 million and $130 million, respectively. Among those wins was a $45 million deal with the Department of Human Services in June to replace its ageing server infrastructure.

HPE came in fourth with $65.5 million, while its consumer counterpart HP Inc won $18.9 million in contracts.

Speaking of PC vendors, Lenovo brought in $28.2 million, which also includes enterprise services, and Acer made $5.3 million.

Other major government suppliers include Oracle with $64.5 million, SAP with $48.4 million, VMware with $27 million and Microsoft with $24.8 million

Telcos like Telstra and Optus  straddle the line between vendor and partner, so we've categorised them separately.

Telstra won $100.6 million in contracts, while Optus' deals only amounted to $18.5 million despite winning a handful of major deals like an extension to its managed network services deal with the ATO worth $217.1 million.  CRN will keep tapping the side of the tenders website until the rest of those contracts fall out.

Now let's look at how partners fared with the Feds.

We can't imagine too many people are surprised that Data#3 topped the partner charts with $121.3 million given its role as the chosen supplier of Office365.

One name to watch out for is Modis Consulting, which changed its name from Ajilon in April last 2018. The HR solutions specialist picked up a string of state government contracts in recent years, such as a $4.2 million deal in February to commercialise NSW's Jury Management System, but the company also picked up tons of federal work with $48.5 million in contracts.

Another name to watch out for is Fred IT, which picked up a $22.8 million contract in October to develop a new software system for the Department of Health's initiative to reduce prescription medicine overdoses.

Melbourne's Revolution IT also made the list by winning a $9 million deal in August to provide vendor advisory services to the Department of Home Affairs.

Other major suppliers include Fujitsu with $108.8 million, Dimension Data with $91.9 million, Ethan Group with $57.3 million, DXC with $30.4 million and Dialog with $23.5 million.