The UK’s Royal Mail Group has signed a contract with CSC to provide cloud computing information technology (IT) services. The new contract is an expansion of a previous contract signed in 2003 with CSC to maintain the Royal Mail Group's desktop computers and manage and develop its servers, mainframes and IT processes.

The contract is the first cloud computing services agreement of this scale. Under the terms of the agreement, CSC will provide Royal Mail Group’s 30,000 employees with access to new IT services from Microsoft. CSC will also provide helpdesk support.

Royal Mail Group's Head of Technology Service Delivery, Carol Olney, commented: “This deal forms part of Royal Mail's drive to invest in new technology to improve efficiency and customer service.” She continued, “The Microsoft suite will give people across Royal Mail Group the tools they need to do their jobs more effectively, enabling our business units to collaborate with each other, partners and other external organisations more freely, easily and securely while securing cost savings."