IT services supplier Fujitsu has won the contract to manage the Department of Work and Pensions’ desktop estate, in what the company describes as the “single biggest desktop and thin client outsource deal in the UK”.

Fujitsu will manage the DWP’s 140,000 desktop machines across 1,000 locations and will introduce thin client and desktop virtualisation technology. This, according to the department’s CIO Joe Harley, “provides a number of benefits, including little or no maintenance required to the kit and reductions in power consumption which supports our sustainability agenda”.

The deal is reported to be worth over £300 million. Fujitsu will employ technology from suppliers including EMC, Citrix, Microsoft and Appsense to build and manage the new desktop infrastructure.

A statement from Citrix described the deal as “a huge validation of desktop virtualisation”. Recent research from that company recently found that 27% of CIOs plan to roll out desktop virtualisation, while 36% have already done so to some degree.

Observers noted the irony of the DWP awarding the contract to Fujitsu, whose UK staff have staged a number of strikes to protest the company’s revised pension plan.