Energex, Ergon power up mega Windows 7 upgrade

Shared services provider and HP tie-up for major project.

Queensland utilities Energex and Ergon Energy have embarked on a major IT upgrade that will put Windows 7 and Office 2010 on the computers of 10,000 users across the state.

The project was being handled by SPARQ Solutions, the IT shared services provider for the two government-owned electricity suppliers, together with vendor HP.

The utilities' existing standard operating environment (SOE) included Windows XP and Office 2003.

Once the SOE upgrade was completed, users would have the latest production version of the Windows desktop operating system and Office Professional Plus 2010.

A SPARQ spokesman said phase one of the project, which included verification of the scope of work and business requirements, had commenced in June this year.

The full SOE deployment to 10,000 desktop and laptop users was expected to be completed by the middle of next year.

The spokesman said it was "one of the largest Windows 7 rollouts undertaken in Australia to date".

SPARQ was also in the process of managing application-readiness for the new environment.

"As part of the project more than 6000 applications will be analysed and more than 1000 application packages created for Windows 7," the spokesman said.

SPARQ said it was leveraging HP's knowledge from working on projects of a similar scale worldwide.

Energex supplied electricity to approximately 2.9 million people in South East Queensland, while Ergon Energy serviced around 680,000 customers.