Viglen wins Northern Ireland megadeal

Viglen has scooped the contract to run IT for Northern Ireland's primary schools. The deal runs for three years and is worth £26.2m, and is the fourth that Viglen has won from the Northern Irish education system, worth £50m in total.

Under these contracts, the system builder-cum-education reseller will supply Northern Irish schools with 10,500 PC workstations, 660 servers and 329 CD servers. It is also supplying Northern Irish schools with MS software for a minimum of 40,000 desktops - apparently this is the biggest Microsoft schools licensing agreement in Europe. And it is handling the licenses for 16 curriculum software companies.

Viglen's rival educational suppliers, RM PLC and ICL walked away from sole negotiating status for the Northern Ireland schools contract at the back end of 2000. At the time, the contract was said to be worth £300m over 10 years, but RM said it could not accept onerous contract clauses demanded by Norther Ireland.

RM last week announced 99 redundancies, to take effect next month. The company currently employs c.1,500 people. ®

RM shuns £300m Northern Ireland contract