HP loses DWP contract
Discussion
thereg said:
HP has lost one of the largest outsourced IT contracts awarded by the British government to rival Fujitsu Services.
The Department of Work and Pensions today confirmed to The Register it had appointed Fujitsu Services as the preferred bidder to take over its huge desktop contract from 31 August.
A DWP spokeswoman declined to reveal the value of the new contract, but it is part of a package of two worth £4.5bn.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/13/hp_dwp
Wonder what caused this?The Department of Work and Pensions today confirmed to The Register it had appointed Fujitsu Services as the preferred bidder to take over its huge desktop contract from 31 August.
A DWP spokeswoman declined to reveal the value of the new contract, but it is part of a package of two worth £4.5bn.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/13/hp_dwp
andrewws said:
Didn't fujitsu buy ICL ions ago, maybe thats got something to do with it?? As ICL was always the governments prefered supplier in my IT days, they had allot of public sector experience that may still be there.
ICL used to be owned by Fujitsu and were going to be floated but when they didn't win the contract that HP have just lost they were absorbed into Fujitsu and ICL was no more.Shame really as it was the UK's only big IT company.
Perhaps they put in a cheaper bid than HP, government sectors are a bit silly when it comes to spending our money, they go for the cheapest bid not the quality of the product, or if you have done something or got something really wrong
example three companies put a quote on for boxes
First quote is £10000 for x amount of cheap thin paper boxes
Second quote is £15000 for x amount of medium grade thick cardboard boxes
Third quote is £20000 for x amount of heavy duty extra thick cardboard boxes
The number crunchers will then buy the cheapest ones first, they will fail, so they have wasted £10k, then they will spend £15k on the next set, which fail, they then spend £20k on the third set of boxes which last, in their eyes they have said money when infact they have spunked £25k down the drain, and there is not second chance with government departments, one chance thats it.
perhaps
HP couldn't deliver the correct machines, at the right cheapest price, or they f
ked up something proper, as in complete internal failure of the DWP intranets etc and they have said foxtrot oscar.
example three companies put a quote on for boxes
First quote is £10000 for x amount of cheap thin paper boxes
Second quote is £15000 for x amount of medium grade thick cardboard boxes
Third quote is £20000 for x amount of heavy duty extra thick cardboard boxes
The number crunchers will then buy the cheapest ones first, they will fail, so they have wasted £10k, then they will spend £15k on the next set, which fail, they then spend £20k on the third set of boxes which last, in their eyes they have said money when infact they have spunked £25k down the drain, and there is not second chance with government departments, one chance thats it.
perhaps
HP couldn't deliver the correct machines, at the right cheapest price, or they f
ked up something proper, as in complete internal failure of the DWP intranets etc and they have said foxtrot oscar.More like the DWP needed to prove that it was able to switch providers under its provisioning framework, and was not tied to the current incumbent. Which service is easiest to comodotise? Desktop.
Although yes probably Fujitsu put in a lossleading bid to get their feet under the table too.
Although yes probably Fujitsu put in a lossleading bid to get their feet under the table too.
I for one am glad to see this.
Having worked on a project some years ago at DWP run by EDS (now HP), every component was tested individually to the full stress of the requirement with total success. However, EDS as the SI were advised (at least by us) to test out the full end-to-end infrastructure - which they, in their aloof, incompetent wisdom decided not to do.
So, on go live day, 130,000 people had a new system announced to them simultaneously, and immediately tried to use it. The net result is that the mickey mouse appservers they specced in Microsoft took all the requests, overloaded, sat there and failed to pass them to the supporting system - in this case a search engine.
Fair enough, if they were honest and man enough to hold up their hands and fix it, all would be well. If they had tested to cover the fact that we had advised them that we had seen this happen before, fair enough. But no, they spent many 10's of thousands of taxpayers money trying to prove that it was not their fault, delayed deployment significantly and blamed the supporting systems. The net result was that they threw out some perfectly good components, and replaced them (at great license and implementation expense) with similar capabilities whilst upping their infrastructure to fix the initial problem. All this despite the fact that the supporting systems logs actually showed that there were no requests coming from their appserver infrastructure to the components.
IMO, in that particular instance, they were simply political operators wasting millions of pounds covering their arses on their failed project. I hope they lose the rest of the contracts there, and like the earlier poster, I pity Fujitsu.
But then again, DII and chickens coming home to roost comes to mind...
Having worked on a project some years ago at DWP run by EDS (now HP), every component was tested individually to the full stress of the requirement with total success. However, EDS as the SI were advised (at least by us) to test out the full end-to-end infrastructure - which they, in their aloof, incompetent wisdom decided not to do.
So, on go live day, 130,000 people had a new system announced to them simultaneously, and immediately tried to use it. The net result is that the mickey mouse appservers they specced in Microsoft took all the requests, overloaded, sat there and failed to pass them to the supporting system - in this case a search engine.
Fair enough, if they were honest and man enough to hold up their hands and fix it, all would be well. If they had tested to cover the fact that we had advised them that we had seen this happen before, fair enough. But no, they spent many 10's of thousands of taxpayers money trying to prove that it was not their fault, delayed deployment significantly and blamed the supporting systems. The net result was that they threw out some perfectly good components, and replaced them (at great license and implementation expense) with similar capabilities whilst upping their infrastructure to fix the initial problem. All this despite the fact that the supporting systems logs actually showed that there were no requests coming from their appserver infrastructure to the components.
IMO, in that particular instance, they were simply political operators wasting millions of pounds covering their arses on their failed project. I hope they lose the rest of the contracts there, and like the earlier poster, I pity Fujitsu.
But then again, DII and chickens coming home to roost comes to mind...
pits said:
example three companies put a quote on for boxes
First quote is £10000 for x amount of cheap thin paper boxes
Second quote is £15000 for x amount of medium grade thick cardboard boxes
Third quote is £20000 for x amount of heavy duty extra thick cardboard boxes
The number crunchers will then buy the cheapest ones first, they will fail, so they have wasted £10k, then they will spend £15k on the next set, which fail, they then spend £20k on the third set of boxes which last, in their eyes they have said money when infact they have spunked £25k down the drain, and there is not second chance with government departments, one chance thats it.
Alternativley they will get raped for spending 20,000 when they 'could' have spent 10kFirst quote is £10000 for x amount of cheap thin paper boxes
Second quote is £15000 for x amount of medium grade thick cardboard boxes
Third quote is £20000 for x amount of heavy duty extra thick cardboard boxes
The number crunchers will then buy the cheapest ones first, they will fail, so they have wasted £10k, then they will spend £15k on the next set, which fail, they then spend £20k on the third set of boxes which last, in their eyes they have said money when infact they have spunked £25k down the drain, and there is not second chance with government departments, one chance thats it.
Oh and as an added fujitsu are certainly no better than hp as a service delivery company. They also have a habit of grossly overcharging and lost a contract i was working on when an IT manager found they were charging something like 150-200 quid for a patch panel which was worth only about 30 quid.
SeeFive said:
I for one am glad to see this.
Having worked on a project some years ago at DWP run by EDS (now HP), every component was tested individually to the full stress of the requirement with total success. However, EDS as the SI were advised (at least by us) to test out the full end-to-end infrastructure - which they, in their aloof, incompetent wisdom decided not to do.
So, on go live day, 130,000 people had a new system announced to them simultaneously, and immediately tried to use it. The net result is that the mickey mouse appservers they specced in Microsoft took all the requests, overloaded, sat there and failed to pass them to the supporting system - in this case a search engine.
Are you sure about that - which system did 130,000 users get that wasn't end to end tested? Having worked on a project some years ago at DWP run by EDS (now HP), every component was tested individually to the full stress of the requirement with total success. However, EDS as the SI were advised (at least by us) to test out the full end-to-end infrastructure - which they, in their aloof, incompetent wisdom decided not to do.
So, on go live day, 130,000 people had a new system announced to them simultaneously, and immediately tried to use it. The net result is that the mickey mouse appservers they specced in Microsoft took all the requests, overloaded, sat there and failed to pass them to the supporting system - in this case a search engine.
TonyToniTone said:
johnfm said:
how is this news?
Should this not be in the 'obscure, IT contract news' sub forum?
I should have posted it in the computer section but you didn't need to click it, read it or reply to it.Should this not be in the 'obscure, IT contract news' sub forum?
johnfm said:
TonyToniTone said:
johnfm said:
how is this news?
Should this not be in the 'obscure, IT contract news' sub forum?
I should have posted it in the computer section but you didn't need to click it, read it or reply to it.Should this not be in the 'obscure, IT contract news' sub forum?
Tallbut Buxomly said:
Chimune said:
So whats happens with HP jobs currently being advertised by EDS ??
What are you smoking??? HP/EDS are laying huge amounts of people off not hiring.
I am a bit confused.
Edited by Chimune on Thursday 14th January 12:17
SeeFive said:
But no, they spent many 10's of thousands of taxpayers money trying to prove that it was not their fault, delayed deployment significantly and blamed the supporting systems. The net result was that they threw out some perfectly good components, and replaced them (at great license and implementation expense) with similar capabilities whilst upping their infrastructure to fix the initial problem.
That is the whole aim of any outsourcing provider . . . there's no point going in with a genuine quote, they go in low to get the business then heap on the extras to make money, regardless of trust or fact. Did you notice that the clever people were there from day 1 . . . then by the end of the first/second year they had moved off somewhere else and you were left with the graduates and the old duffers with just a small number of 'experts' ? I know of one outsourcer who was charging £1000 to move a PC from one room to another in the same office block . . . they are all at the same thing, it's all about maximising revenue and sucking the client dry.
Chimune said:
Tallbut Buxomly said:
Chimune said:
So whats happens with HP jobs currently being advertised by EDS ??
What are you smoking??? HP/EDS are laying huge amounts of people off not hiring.
I am a bit confused.
Edited by Chimune on Thursday 14th January 12:17
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