Moore said IWL inherited the Sun kit after its acquisition of Perth-based JDV in October 2005.

He said IWL had a pre-existing relationship with IBM and staff were more familiar with the configuration of the equipment.

The upgrade was also necessary to host and maintain an online brokerage application for one of its largest clients.

"IWL has a lot of internal experience with IBM hardware. Combined with IBM's powerful management tools, we can do a lot more maintenance in-house rather than getting an external provider," he said.

"The system almost pays for itself within a couple of years just in the reduction of maintenance costs.