Hewlett-Packard Limited has announced that it has been awarded a US$46 million IT outsourcing contract to improve security and reliability while reducing costs for Interconnector (UK) Limited, the operator of the strategic gas pipeline between continental Europe and the UK.

The ten-year deal involves the full range of HP products and services, including a dual data-centre solution across international boundaries and converged infrastructure technologies designed to offer the high levels of security, availability and reliability.

“Our expectation is that the improved performance will enhance our end user experience and our visibility of service quality and we estimate that it will reduce IT costs significantly over alternative solutions,” said Terry Stephens, chief information officer for Interconnector. “We chose HP because of their deep understanding of our business needs and they delivered a competitively priced solution which minimized our risk.”

The new services will be delivered from HP’s state-of-art data centre in Wynyard, UK with disaster recovery through Interconnector’s Data Centre in Zeebrugge, Belgium. The agreement covers the provision of dual data centres, webhosting, networking services, end-user workplace services, service management, application maintenance and development, security services and disaster recovery, server and storage refresh and technology transfer and adoption support.

“With our technology breadth, data centre and services capability, we are able to help companies like Interconnector build an Instant-On Enterprise. This will enable them to drive growth through innovation, reduce costs through optimization and manage risk to their advantage,” said Craig Wilson, vice president for United Kingdom and Ireland, HP Enterprise Services.