The news that the loveable Twitter was infected by a virus this bank holiday weekend has sent me musing into the world of IT. Do not fear, the damage was limited and so we can all continue Twittering to our hearts content. So in the spirit of all that is IT related lets get on with this weeks News Round-Up…

Big blue has got even bigger this week, having received yet another ITO deal. This time it’s a 10-year ITO contract with Kurmanchal Nagar Sahakari Bank Ltd, one of the leading urban co-operative banks in the state of Uttarakhand in India. The big guns at IBM will now remotely host and manage the IT infrastructure and the disaster recovery site, as well as provide the networking infrastructure for the bank.

This agreement is first-of-a-kind for IBM in Uttarakhand and follows its success with other co-operative banks in different parts of the country. It has been a while since I have seen the words ‘success’ and ‘banks’ in the same sentence. Let’s hope things start looking up for more of them soon.

Another ITO contract came in the form of a five million euro deal for Steria, a current bellwether of the outsourcing industry. The contract is with Seguros Lagun Aro, an insurance company belonging to the Spanish Mondragón Group (MCC).

Under the terms of the agreement, Steria, whose operating margin jumped a whopping 24.7 per cent for 2008, will provide support for all the company’s applications. Steria will also work to create an application development platform using Oracle’s Developer suite.

Amongst many advantages it is hoped that the deal will allow Seguros Lagun Aro’s IT department to focus more clearly on the requirements of their internal business processes, improve the quality of applications whilst achieving a significant cost reductions. It sounds like Seguros Lagun Aro has got the same idea as everyone else when it comes to outsourcing their IT.

BMW, another big name, has signed a five-year ITO contract with IT behemoth, Accenture, to consolidate its information technology processes and applications.

Accenture will help BMW Group consolidate a vendor network of its application operations service providers in areas including production, sales, logistics, finance and human resources. It is hoped that Accenture will also work to make BMW’s overall IT processes more reliable, predictable and efficient. The agreement is designed to help BMW achieve lasting cost reductions by helping the company simplify its processes while improving the overall service levels provided to its business users.

Accenture will deliver the services to BMW Group through its centres in Hyderabad, India; and Munich and Hof, Germany. Sounds like a big job!

Now, back to Twitter…‘Sourcingfocus.com’s News Round-Up successfully completed – rather well if I do say so myself’.