Esteem Helps Wirral MBC Improve Public Services In £2.4m Contract Win
26 July 2004
Esteem Systems, one of the UK’s leading IT services providers, has been awarded a £2.4m contract by the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral to deliver a server consolidation solution designed to reduce costs and improve services to the public.
Wirral’s investment in the project is with a view to reducing IT maintenance and support costs by consolidating existing data and servers. This will in turn, enable Wirral to implement a new CRM solution to modernise the delivery and availability of information to members of the public and enable e-government initiatives such as ‘Freedom of Information’ to be achieved.
As part of the contract Esteem will supply consultancy services; implement the infrastructure and software; and provide five years support as a Sun Microsystems Service Manager.
The consolidated IT infrastructure will provide Wirral with the ability to integrate core business applications including a content management system and the new CRM solution. This centralised structure will enable the Council to provide members of the public with a single point of contact for all enquiries, instead of having to speak to individual departments holding segmented information.
John Macmillan, Superstructure Manager at Wirral Council, said: “Esteem’s solution will provide a platform for the next 5-10 years for us and this will enable us to make key developments to our systems both now and in the future. The CRM solution will allow us to make sure that all our interactions with the public, including Freedom of Information requests, are dealt with in a timely and coordinated manner.
“As part of the ‘modernising government’ agenda we have been reviewing how and what services we should be delivering over the coming years. We need to be able to deliver joined up services and to do this we need to integrate some of our core systems. The benefits of this will be in terms of the quality and cost of services delivered.”
Alastair Kitching, Sales Director at Esteem Systems, said: “This is a key public sector account win for Esteem and really cements our position as one of the key suppliers of IT solutions and services to this sector. Our experience, accreditations and partnering relationships with key software companies make us an extremely attractive option for organisations looking for highly professional, skilled IT services and support.”
Charles Allan, Core IT Replacement Project Manager with Wirral Council, said: ‘This project will bring major long-term benefits to Wirral, and we are looking forward to working closely with Esteem to get the project off the ground.’
The solution will be based on a Sun Microsystems infrastructure which will include: two Sun Fire 6900s, two Sun StorEdge 6320s in a storage area network configuration, ten Sun V240 servers, six Sun V440s and two V880 servers. The solution will also provide secure data backup, high availability and improved resilience by incorporating Veritas NetBackup and High-Availability.com’s RSF-1.
If you require any further information, please contact our Press Officer on 01937 861000 or e-mail on press@esteem.co.uk
