Virgin Atlantic has signed a five-year agreement with SITA services to provide IT support for the airline. Under the five-year agreement, SITA services will provide Virgin with more than 100 sites worldwide in addition to taking over 40 contracts from previous suppliers.

The airline IT specialist will also supply international and domestic IP virtual private networks, voice-managed local area networks, cabling, core network support as well as vendor and service management.

According to the airline’s director of finance and business services, Tim Livett, the agreement is intended to improve service delivery while generating “significant economies of scale".

The deal, which forms an important part of Virgin Atlantic’s IT cost reduction strategy, is expected to be completed by this summer. “[Virgin] will have the added benefits of simplified supplier management, faster deployment, improved reporting and reduced incident resolution times. All hugely valuable in addition to the monetary savings” said the firm’s head of IT services, Matthew Billings.