Avaya inks Aussie Treasury deal

Avaya has inked a deal with the Australian Federal Government's central economic agency, the Commonwealth Treasury, that will see Avaya's SDN Fx architecture replace the agency's legacy network infrastructure.

The deal aims to enable the day-to-day operation of the Commonwealth Treasury and the production of critical government policy, including the Federal Budget.

With responsibility for informing Australia's macro- and micro-economic future, the Treasury required a means of improving the delivery of services and applications to its ministerial and administrative employees, and running day-to-day systems.

Following a comprehensive evaluation of networking technology based on government eligibility criteria, Treasury commenced a staged progression to implement the Avaya SDN Fx architecture to replace its legacy network infrastructure.

The network also provides reliable access to key applications, such as the Treasury's Budget Management System (BMS) and other economic and tax modelling software, which are critical to its ability to deliver the Budget on time. It also underpins systems such as security services, archiving, VoIP and CCTV/IPTV. The architecture of Avaya SDN Fx allows the Treasury to drive these services internally rather than contracting various parties to maintain separate systems across multiple networks.

The initial stages of the implementation have seen the introduction of network-wide IP television (IPTV) to livestream Parliamentary sittings directly to all staff. With multiple agency employees responsible for closely monitoring proceedings, access via the Avaya network accelerates the speed at which Ministers and employees can relay information into the sittings.

Prior to the new network, the Treasury experienced a number of outages as its multi-vendor environment struggled to manage hundreds of streams due to the amount of data flowing through the network.

"When you're in charge of delivering some of the nation's most important documents, you can't afford a lack of availability or any network outages. As the backbone of Australia's economy, the Treasury has responsibility for a large-scale operation that relies on stability," comments Darren Read, general manager, Services Australia and New Zealand.

"With the installation of Avaya SDN Fx architecture, the Treasury is moving from an inconsistent, multi-vendor experience to a simple and dynamic network architecture, allowing Ministers and employees to engage and collaborate from anywhere, anytime," he says.

Since the beginning of the Avaya SDN Fx implementation, the Treasury has reduced operational costs and expects return on investment to continue as its small network engineering team is able to roll out new projects and applications quicker.

Similarly, the Treasury has increased the productivity of its staff by enabling a mobile workforce that is able to access critical applications without interruption regardless of location.

"As we upgrade to Avaya SDN Fx architecture, we can take on more services, and provide the speed and reliability enabling greater efficiency for our staff in fulfilling their roles," says Ricardo Alberto,  chief technology officer, Commonwealth Treasury.

"The teams work on strict deadlines, so it's extremely important they can access data and all the resources they need to inform their reports," he says.

"With these capabilities, we can ensure that critical documents, such as the Budget, are delivered on time.