German financial IT services company Sparkassen Informatik (SI) has signed a four year contract with IBM for the supply of 20 high-performance mainframe computers.
SI currently provides on demand IT services to more than half of Germany's savings banks.
Under the deal, which is rumoured to be worth several hundred million dollars, SI will replace 36 of IBM's older mainframes with 20 IBM eServer zSeries z990s. IBM says the move will increase SI's processing capacity.
Fridolin Neumann, CEO, Sparkassen Informatik, says: "We need a platform with the potential to enable us to provide continual performance/cost benefits to our customers as well as to be able to meet the market demand for production performance. IBM was able to provide us with such a platform."
According to press reports, the contract is IBM's largest hardware deal since at least 2000 and one of the biggest of the past 10 years.