International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) has secured a A$1 billion ($740 million) agreement to become a central technology partner of the Australian government over the next five years.
- Contract comes 2 years after playing role in bungled census
- Government savings from 5-year agreement estimated at A$100m
The contract will see services such as automation and blockchain provided to federal departments including defense and home affairs, IBM’s Asia Pacific head, Harriet Green commented.
The “youth of the technology” and the employment of Australians to support and help the implementation would be hallmarks of the new partnership, she said.
IBM, which is combating falling revenues, will also create renewed platforms to protect citizens’ data while providing A$100 million in savings to taxpayers, according to government estimates.
Cyber attacks have hit international firms such as Facebook and Ticketmaster in the past year, as well as Australia’s national science agency.
The contract comes two years after IBM agreed to pay more than A$30 million in compensation to the Australian government for its role in the bungled national census.
The survey was hit by four distributed denial of service attacks that temporarily shut down the twice-a-decade project, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said at the time that “overwhelmingly the failure was IBM’s.”
…but what is IBM?
International Business Machines (IBM), is a global technology company that provides hardware, software, cloud-based services and cognitive computing.
Founded in 1911 following the merger of four companies in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint, it was originally called Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. It would be renamed to IBM in 1924.
Given that the company is over 100 years old it is no surprise that it has had to adjust to different technological trends throughout the decades.
The company is now transitioning from being an infrastructure player to one that is more cloud and data driven.
Nicknamed ‘Big Blue’, the company offers cloud products in the shape of Bluemix, a SoftLayer cloud, and data analytics, or cognitive computing capabilities, with the Watson supercomputer.
While the company has expanded its portfolio from server hardware, this is still an area that it operates in with the z Series mainframe.
The company also offers software with the likes of its DB2 database offering, and IBM SPSS.
Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO, said: “Digital is the wires, but digital intelligence, or artificial intelligence as some people call it, is about much more than that. This next decade is about how you combine those and become a cognitive business. It’s the dawn of a new era.”
IBM has been focused on continuous innovation for more than a century. Patenting is an important barometer of that innovation, and IBM has topped the annual list of U.S. patent recipients for the 20th consecutive year.
