NB 561
May 11, 2005
FREDERICTON (CNB) - Service New Brunswick (SNB) is teaming up with Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc, one of the world's leading IT companies, in a relationship that will see Sun invest in the upgrading of key components of SNB's IT infrastructure and save the corporation nearly a million dollars over the next three years.
"Sun's investment in SNB will reduce our capital requirements over the next few years and allow the corporation to reinvest the savings in developing better and more services for the citizens and businesses of the province," said Intergovernmental and International Relations Minister Percy Mockler, Minister responsible for Service New Brunswick. "We feel that this new relationship puts SNB and the government in a win-win situation."
"As governments extend more services to constituents and work to reduce operational costs, they have increasingly turned to electronic delivery of information," said Stéphane Boisvert, president of Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc. "Sun has a long history of working with all levels of government in Canada, and we look forward to helping SNB deliver services to the residents of New Brunswick."
Under this new agreement, Sun Microsystems will enhance all the Sun servers currently being used by SNB, such as the one used for the provincial land registry system, known as PLANET. Sun will also supply two storage area networks, and provide an entire enterprise backup system for the two SNB server locations.
In addition to Sun internationally showcasing the provincial Crown corporation, Sun and SNB are entering a formal three-year commitment whereby SNB will name Sun as the preferred UNIX operating environment in a non-exclusive way. As Sun has international markets, these publications have the potential to reach a wide audience and help to promote SNB's sales efforts.
SNB and Sun have also agreed to jointly donate the existing Sun hardware at SNB to other government departments, to research institutions such as the electronic health centres of excellence, or to educational institutions.
"The overall goal of the relationship is to promote leadership and innovation in New Brunswick and to make advanced technology more accessible to both private sector and government," Mockler said.
Service New Brunswick first began using Sun products in 1999. The equipment and the services provided by Sun have proven to be reliable, stable and robust beyond expectations. Replacement of such equipment was anticipated over the next few years as part of SNB's equipment replacement program, but this is unnecessary now.
While benefiting from this agreement, SNB will continue to use other suppliers' hardware and equipment as part of our current contracts.
Service New Brunswick is a provincial Crown corporation known internationally for its e-government solutions and single-window multi-channel service delivery concept. It provides more than 200 government services through 36 service centres throughout the province, SNB TeleServices, toll-free, at 1-888-762-8600, and SNB Online at: http://www.snb.ca.
Service New Brunswick is also responsible for the development and maintenance of geographical databases, real property assessments and three registries: the personal property registry, the corporate affairs registry and the real property registry.
05/05/11
MEDIA CONTACT: Marc Gosselin, Service New Brunswick, 506-453-6775.
05/05/11