NEC wins $150m dollar Centralised Processing support contract with Australian Department of Defence

*** For immediate use September 10, 2014

Canberra and Tokyo, 10 September 2014 - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) and NEC Australia, a leading Australian IT solutions and services company, have announced its appointment as a key partner on the Australian Department of Defence's Centralised Processing Project, which will deliver a single integrated capability for the management and provision of Centralised Processing facilities, infrastructure and services across multiple security domains.

NEC Australia has been appointed as a key member of a team led by Lockheed Martin Australia, which has recently concluded a contract with the Australian Department of Defence after being selected in April as the preferred tenderer for its Centralised Processing project. The project will involve the transformation and consolidation of multiple data centres located across Australia and International locations to a centralised set of core data centres to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

"Lockheed Martin Australia will partner with Defence and a number of innovative Australian-based enterprises such as NEC to deliver effective and efficient information technology infrastructure and services critical to supporting Defence business and military operations," said Lockheed Martin Australia Chief Executive, Mr Raydon Gates.

NEC Australia will provide critical technical and monitoring support to Defence and Lockheed Martin Australia throughout the project.  Centralised Processing will establish a single, integrated capability for the management and provision of data centre facilities, infrastructure and services for Defence's Unclassified, Restricted and Secret information security domains.

NEC Australia will be responsible to Lockheed Martin Australia for maintaining the stability and efficiency of Defence systems as the project consolidates from within 280 data centres across Australia and at international locations to a centralised core consisting of 11 facilities within Australia and three located overseas.

Specifically, NEC Australia will assist to re-host its applications in the transformed facilities and will coordinate with Lockheed Martin Australia and Defence to decommission and dispose of legacy data centre equipment throughout the transition to the new operating environment.

During the transition to the new environment, NEC's operations team will assume responsibility for Defence's Business As Usual infrastructure, including mid-range servers and storage systems. NEC Australia will also continue to operate the new environment until the end of the project.

The project will be undertaken through a close and collaborative partnership with Lockheed Martin Australia that has been designed to leverage the strengths of both companies to deliver Defence's consolidated data centre, infrastructure and applications strategy.

The project will help Defence move to a transformed environment by improving the overall effectiveness and efficiency of Defence ICT services, disaster recovery, and provide greater certainty of service continuity to Defence and its people. The project will also reduce Defence's implementation time and cost of service, and will improve system availability, agility, responsiveness, reliability and security.

Tetsuro Akagi, Managing Director of NEC Australia said: "NEC Australia's new partnership with Lockheed Martin Australia and the Department of Defence builds on NEC's 45 year legacy of helping Australian customers gain greater business value from their technology investments, and supports the organisation's transformation in becoming a leading ICT services company."