Western Australian energy utility Horizon Power has signed a three year ICT managed services contract with Japanese IT services giant Fujitsu, in one of the vendor’s first major deals in the state since opening a new datacentre in the region in late 2010.

 

Horizon generates and retails electricity across Western Australia’s regional centres, servicing some 42,500 customers across an area of some 2.3 million square kilometers.

 

In a statement, Fujitsu said the contract covered end-to-end infrastructure support, including services around Horizon Power’s service desk, change, problem, asset and configuration management, server storage, database and network support, email and Citrix applications support, VoIP telephony support, end-user device support, meeting room technologies and more.

 

In Fujitsu’s statement, Horizon Power general manager of knowledge and technology James Deacon praised the vendor.

 

We were looking for an outsourcing partner who not only understood our IT requirements, but also supported our mandate to deliver inter-generational assets to the communities we service,” Mr Deacon said. “The successful partner needed to have a proven service delivery capability and the ability to leverage processes and expertise from a national and global pool of resources, from a local base, allowing Horizon Power to provide greater efficiencies at all of our sites.”

 

“Right through the competitive selection process, Fujitsu demonstrated its ability to deliver and a willingness to partner with us in an area of great importance to our business, that of Aboriginal employment in WA, across various fields of work. The engagement of Fujitsu’s senior executives throughout the process gave us the confidence that we had selected the right partner to work with.”

 

The news represents one of the first major deals Fujitsu has signed in the state since the opening of its new WA-based datacentre in November last year. The facility comprises 8000 square metres of tier three datacentre space, with three main general data halls and three smaller halls for companies requiring dedicated private suites.