Kent County Council has signed a £10m deal with IBM to replace for its core IT infrastructure.

Under the terms of the five-year deal, IBM will replace 15,000 PCs and make sure no equipment is over five-years-old at any stage in the contract.

Much of the council's current technology is up to six-years-old and posing potential problems, says Kent's information services group programme manager Peter Bole.

'We are still running on Windows NT4 currently, so there is a lot of pressure on us in terms of the age of the infrastructure, and the software it is capable of running, both of which are in danger of becoming obsolescent,' he said.

'Kent is also facing a situation where we no longer have effective warranty arrangement for out server environments. The level of risk to the business environment would have increased rapidly if we had not made this move.'

The refresh will help provide a foundation to launch new IT projects to help benefit the county's residents.

'In the past, when we have gone to look at new projects, they have always involved unacceptably high costs for infrastructure upgrade. Going for a continuous refresh of our core infrastructure means that is no longer an issue,' Bole said.