HP forges partnerships with key government departments

The changing face of the public sector in South Africa demands that IT vendors rethink their traditional approaches to this market. Apart from meeting uniquely South African requirements such as black empowerment, local vendors need to shift towards a consulting and solutions-led approach in their dealings with the government.

That`s according to Kays Mguni, industry business manager for government at HP SA Consulting. Says Mguni: "The ANC-led government has recognised the importance of information and technology as strategic assets. All government IT projects are driven from the top levels of the government with buy-in from the presidency and senior officials in the departments of Public Administration and Communications.

"The public sector is driven by business and social issues, and it doesn`t have budget to squander on technology projects that don`t deliver a meaningful return on investment. For that reason, government is increasingly partnering with suppliers that are positioned to deliver solutions to its challenges and problems rather than buying ad hoc pieces of technology."

HP`s wins in the South African public sector over the past 18 months demonstrate its success in implementing a model of partnering with government and providing business solutions, he adds.

HP Consulting SA is helping with the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to define a strategy for IT and Information Management. The strategic plan defines the system strategy, the IT organisational implications as well IT governance across the extended enterprise of that department, which includes statutory bodies such as SA Tourism.

HP SA was part of the Arivia.kom-led Masiye Phambili consortium that won the R365m deal to overhaul the Department of Transport`s National Traffic Information System (NaTIS). It is now one of the primary service providers to the newly formed TASIMA (Pty) Ltd that will be running that contract.

HP SA will be supplying high-end servers, storage systems, PCs, printers, scanners, and networking products for the project. It will also provide network management and security software as well as a portfolio of consulting services around systems, call centre, and network management and design.

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Together with Datacentrix, HP SA has won a number of important public sector deals such as supplying the hardware infrastructure for Census 2001 and the last national elections. HP and Datacentrix also won a substantial part of the State Term IT Tender issued last year.

In terms of the RT222 State Term Tender, HP and Datacentrix, together with their SME partners, are offering the HP Jornada, Netserver six-way and eight-way Intel-based servers, and HP OmniBook notebooks to national government departments.

Thabo Molefe, responsible for corporate sales HP South Africa, says that by December 2001, the 26 national government departments had placed orders for more than 300 Netservers.

He says that the RT222 tender, evaluated and signed off by the State IT Agency, is playing a vital role in the standardisation of government`s IT infrastructure. This will lead to lower IT cost of ownership in the longer term.

Says Molefe: "Desktops, notebooks, and commodity servers have long been regarded as an as-needed purchase, which has resulted in a legacy of unmatched PC`s bought over the years with price as the main consideration.

"Typically a large organisation will find itself with dozens or hundreds of PC`s each with its own configuration, operating system version, software applications and sometimes pirated software; and no asset-tracking. Standardisation reduces the cost of maintenance and service; eases management of upgrades; and reduces training costs."

Wim Heuninck, Marketing Director at HP SA, says that skills transfer and black economic empowerment form key elements of all HP`s bids for government business. To this end, HP recruits empowerment partners for government project and shares its knowledge and expertise with black-owned partners and government IT employees.