Having won Santos' IT services business from CSC three years ago, Volante now has Windows and Unix server teams and a WAN team working with the company.

Volante client manager Philip Norris said Santos is now involved in a notebook and monitor refresh project involving 700 notebooks and 700 flat screen monitors to replace aging CRTs.

Santos, which has about 2000 end users, expects the project to be completed by mid-2006. HP is Santos' vendor of choice for the notebooks and desktops, and the office productivity suite software will be upgraded to Microsoft Office 2003 as part of the project.

Norris said Volante makes technology recommendations about most hardware but Santos "has its own choice".

"HP was the incumbent," Norris, who could not disclose the value of the upgrade, said. "IBM and HP competed, not much between them so it came down to price and HP won."