Bechtle will work with its long-term partners HP and Acer to deliver the hardware while providing services through its own Hamburg-based service organisation. Dataport’s Europe-wide call for tenders sought maximum hardware and service value for money, as well as energy efficiency and environmental criteria. In addition, it prioritised products produced responsibly in accordance with fundamental labour and social standards.
In 2015, Dataport placed first in the innovative product procurement category of Germany’s Innovation schafft Vorsprung (“Headstart through Innovation”) competition. Specifically, the award honoured Dataport’s efforts to apply social criteria to the area of hardware procurement. “Our sizeable presence on the market has once again enabled us to attain maximum value when procuring hardware and services for the federal states we serve,” explains Dataport chairman Dr Johann Bizer. “In addition, our strong partnership with Bechtle guarantees that state governments’ IT will benefit from current trends and innovations.”
Dataport is a full-service IT provider for the governments of the German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein, as well as Schleswig-Holstein’s intermunicipal IT consortium (ITVSH). With a staff of 2,500 people, it is responsible for some 90,000 IT seats, many of which are managed standard workstations. Dataport is the only government IT provider that serves both federal states and municipalities.
Christian Schwickart, Managing Director of the Bechtle IT systems integrator in Hamburg, comments, “We look forward to continuing our highly successful partnership with Dataport and its clients. This cross-border contract will be managed centrally in Hamburg and carried out by service units located in the different federal states, allowing us to share synergies across the board.” Bechtle’s fast growing public-sector division includes customers like the German armed forces, numerous federal ministries, state governments, universities as well as the European Commission and NATO. Bechtle was previously awarded Dataport contracts in 2009 and 2013.