Industry news

The Canadian subsidiary of Unisys, Unisys Canada, has won a contract from NEC Corporation of America to provide outsourced IT support services for 470 7-Eleven retail convenience stores throughout Canada.

Under the contract terms, valued at approximately $6 million, Unisys Canada will provide maintenance and support services for IT back-office equipment, on-site wireless networks, point of sale (POS) and inventory ordering systems for the 470 Canadian 7-Eleven retail stores from Ontario to British Columbia. In addition, Unisys will provide deployment services for new systems that 7-Eleven rolls out to its stores for the next three-years.

Sharon Stufflebeme, CIO for 7-Eleven, commented: “Unisys outsourcing expertise combined with NEC’s retail solution integration skills will assist us in growing our 7-Eleven business in Canada. We’ll be able to serve our customers more effectively and efficiently through enhanced in-store technology support.”

As part of a global alliance between the two companies, Unisys is the preferred provider of technology support and maintenance services for NEC in markets outside Japan.

The Directorate General for External Relations, the body responsible for the external policy of the European Commission has signed a four year ITO deal with Fujitsu Services.

The deal will allow the Directorate to deal with various new organisational changes including the increased workload of its delegations. The new contract covers the supply of IT services, the management of the helpdesk, infrastructure management, user support and the management of the projects of the Delegations of the European Commission across 5 000 users and 134 Delegations worldwide.

According to Yves Schellekens, Managing Director Fujitsu Services Belgium and Luxembourg, “This new contract will allow us to pursue and develop our activities among the European Institutions, which, for Fujitsu Services, represent a strategic sector of activities”.

The contract will start on the 1st of June 2008.

Virgin Mobile USA, a leading national provider of prepaid and hybrid wireless plans to North America, has signed off on a new IT services agreement with IBM.

Under the terms of the agreement IBM will manage Virgin Mobile’s IT operations and new applications development. This will entail the migration of existing it infrastructure and applications to IBM systems and the ongoing development of differentiated wireless applications and service offerings in partnership with Virgin. IBM will also provide data centre outsourcing and application management services

Virgin Mobile USA expects that, as a result of its new relationship with IBM, the company will achieve IT-related operational cost savings over the next five years, while increasing the company's competitive advantage in new product and service delivery. The expected benefits of the company's new relationship with IBM are key components of Virgin Mobile USA's focused expansion and value creation strategy.

Jonathan Marchbank, Chief Operations Officer for Virgin Mobile USA, said: "We have built our success as a customer-centric innovator, and always seek to enhance our product and service offerings. These steps will continue to raise the standards in the prepaid market overall and allow us to stay current with, and ahead of, trends and evolutions in the overall wireless industry. With over 5 million customers, the scale we've achieved now puts us in a position to take advantage of IBM's proven best practices, scope and unparalleled experience in running and building IT infrastructure."

The company expects the transition of its existing IT infrastructure and application suite to IBM to be completed by December 31, 2008.

Excelon Corporation, one of the largest electric utilities companies in the US, has signed a new five year IT services deal with CSC.

The contract, reported to be in excess of $150 million, will see CSC provide Exelon with a broad spectrum of infrastructure support services, including help desk, desktop support, database administration, telecommunications and data network support and server management services. Work will be performed at various locations in the US as well as CSC’s World Sourcing delivery centres in Malaysia and India.

Daniel Hill, Senior Vice President and CIO of Exelon, commented: “We are pleased to have CSC bring their experience and expertise to Exelon. Exelon is committed to operational excellence and providing superior value for our customers, shareholders and employees. We believe CSC will be a valuable partner in helping Exelon deliver on our commitments."

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has awarded EDS subsidiary, NHIC Corp., a $148 million contract to administer Medicare claims payments to health care providers for parts of the US Northwest.

The contract, lasting an intial one year, will see NHIC serve approximately 54,000 physicians and practitioners and 233 Medicare hospitals within Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

Lockheed Martin, a US group of technology companies, has won an $89 million information convergence contract from the US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to help enhance the performance of the military's distribution network. 

The Lockheed Martin team, including SAIC, Data Networks Corporation, PRTM, BearingPoint, Rainbow Data Systems, Innolog, Business Objects, Teradata and Oakland Consulting, was awarded the fixed-price, multi-year contract, which includes provisions for supplemental contract extensions in future years.

The contract will see the Lockheed Martin team merge DLA's ‘Integrated Data Environment’ (IDE) distribution system with USTRANSCOM's ‘Global Transportation Network’ (GTN) into a unified system using the increasingly popular, SOA technology.

The finished product will be a common information platform that enables the military to more collaboratively and cost-effectively improve end-to-end supply visibility, responsiveness, decision-making, service and logistics processes.  The platform includes a single repository and universal access to logistics data so that any user or developer can easily find, access or manage supply chain information.  

The Department of Justice (DOJ) for the USA has awarded Unisys, the global IT outsourcer, three ‘task orders’ to provide professional and technical services, expanding an existing long-standing arrangement.

Under the contract Unisys will provide investigative services, training, and program analysis – in support of the DOJ Asset Forfeiture Program (AFP). The task orders form part of a $475 million multi-vendor contract awarded in March 2008.

The AFP is a nationwide law enforcement program that manages assets forfeited in the prosecution of criminals and criminal enterprises. As part of the contract Unisys will be eligible to compete for ‘task orders’ to provide a range of services to AFP management and field professionals. These services include investigative and analytical services, consulting, technical services, and case-related professional support during the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases.

Unisys has supported the DOJ on various AFP services since 2002.

CSC announced today that it has signed a new information technology (IT) outsourcing contract with US aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft Corp. The nine-year agreement is an extension a contract that began in 2002.

Under the new deal, CSC will continue to manage Hawker Beechcraft’s IT infrastructure, including mid-range computers and desktops, help desk operations, IT security, engineering computing, voice and video telecommunications, servers, and local and wide-area networks. CSC will provide these services for Hawker Beechcraft’s operations globally.

Nationwide Building Society has signed a new agreement with BT to manage its networked IT services in an outsourcing deal worth £160 million.

Under the terms of the agreement, lasting an initial seven years, Nationwide will transfer all voice and data networking infrastructure, third party network contracts and in-scope staff to BT.

As part of the contract, BT will deliver a service transformation programme under which they will consolidate Nationwide’s multiple networks onto its industry-leading 21CN Global network which will support both voice and data services on a single converged platform. BT will also deliver enhanced remote access facilities to Nationwide’s non-office based employees. 

The new model will introduce a flexible commercial model providing Nationwide with cost predictability whilst based on industry best practice and a framework of service level agreements (SLAs) at a reduced overall total cost of ownership. 

Traditionally, Nationwide has developed and managed its IT operations in-house and procured point solutions from external suppliers where necessary. This agreement marks a shift towards a preference for a multi-sourcing model for IT services that can provide Nationwide with a reduced overall service cost and with improved service flexibility.

Peter Stafford, Head of IT Infrastructure at Nationwide, said: “Nationwide’s growth in recent years has meant that our IT infrastructure has also had to evolve at an exponential rate to keep up with demand and we must now seek the most efficient and scalable infrastructure service possible to support this. Having worked with BT for a number of years, we are very confident in the team’s ability to fulfil our requirements.”

Under the agreement, Logica will develop and implement a management system for the alliance’s electronic documents across Europe, Turkey and the USA.

Previously, Logica installed a “Document Handling System” (DHS) product for the “NATO Secret” network in ten of the organization’s locations worldwide. By December 2008, DHS is expected to be set up at 14 more locations. Once the project is completed, the majority of NATO’s military community will be using the system.

Prior to the introduction of DHS, NATO was using several separate systems for document management that were closely geared to the individual command centers and institutions of the organisation. With DHS from Logica, NATO employees are now able to access internal documents from any of the organisation’s locations. A powerful search function ensures that documents from a wide variety of different sources can be found quickly and easily.

Steven Janis, Core portfolio coordinator at the NATO C3 Agency, said: “What we wanted from our new document management solution was a user-friendly application that offered our users enterprise-wide rapid access to all appropriate documents stored in the business in a controlled manner, balancing the need-to-know against the need-to-share. Logica has implemented a solution that does exactly that for us”.