Credit: Royal Australian Navy
Dell has scored a $7.1 million contract with the Department of Defence for a hardware refresh for the Royal Australian Navy.
The contract, which lasted from 15 April to 14 May, saw Defence purchase hardware from the vendor to the tune of $7,109,125.10 to replace old technologies with unidentified devices.
The purchase comes as part of the Fleet Information Environment (FIE) modernisation project, a major overhaul of the IT equipment on the Navy’s ships worth $600 million, which was announced in April 2019.
“This capability is the first step in delivering warfighter networks that are unified in development and operation, creating national and multinational computer networks across the Joint Force and will be achieved through common network design and architecture, software, hardware, support arrangements and applications,” the spokesperson said.
The FIE project, according to former Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne, consisted of both classified and unclassified computer networks at the time of the project’s announcement, claiming it was “fundamental to Navy’s ability to operate the fleet day-to-day, including participating in operations with allied nations”.
Nine months after the initial announcement of the project, Defence issued an invitation to the IT community in January 2020 to form part of a panel to supply hardware and software for its ships’ and submarines’ computer networks.
Then in May of that year, Data#3 won a $10.2 million contract to provide unspecified hardware and software products to overhaul its legacy IT equipments.
