"The software procurement [project] was just part of a general strategic model for sourcing," Fry said. "Software is part of the bigger picture where we work with the contract instead of just picking things off the shelf."

Fry said agility is important because the department needs to maintain a quick response time. For example, it is the department's responsibility to manage secure communications for Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings.

The department has just completed a server consolidation project which has since seen virtualization become an integral part of its infrastructure.

"We had a lot of servers for our size so I sat down with operations and worked out the servers and their functions," Fry said. "We used VMware so we could fit more apps per server."

So far, the department's server count has reduced from 100 to 50, and although the exact numbers are not known, Fry said cost reduction was "reasonable", but the big saving was in staff time.