More recently, IP Australia's focus has moved away from the mainframe to its e-commerce, B2B transaction system, and better searching capabilities. Its Java client application is becoming more "problematic" to support and may be redeveloped as an Ajax Web application in the future.

IP Australia is part of the "Cluster 3" group of federal government departments, including the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Australian Electoral Commission, the first all-of-government approach to outsourcing which ends in June 2007.

Ayers said while all three departments have a good relationship, IP Australia will be going it alone with its renewed mainframe contract because it has different requirements. "We are expecting to save a bit of money and we don't need the high-end, mission-critical requirements of a DIMA or the AEC," he said.

This move is also in line with the modern, select-sourcing model of the government. "We did weigh up the options around bringing it in-house again and also the costs associated with any redevelopment," Ayers said, adding one environment and skill-set sounds good but in the end the numbers did not stack up.

"We're after a service which can effectively host our mainframe-based business systems and are open to a service on-demand model. Our Trademark system is an important component of our business so we expect someone with the experience of running a set of business-critical applications to host this."