Portugal's Banco Espírito Santo (BES) has expanded its IT outsourcing contract with IBM to cover the bank's entire midrange infrastructure.
The seven year deal widens the scope of a previous 10 year contract signed in 2006 and includes the management of the bank's server infrastructure in Portugal, including administration, management and operation of the midrange infrastructure - comprised of Intel and Unix servers - as well as associated storage.
The agreement also covers an infrastructure transformation and optimisation programme, with hardware standardisation, consolidation and virtualisation projects.
The contract is part of BES' IT strategy, launched in 2006, to improve efficiency and customer service.
The initial 2006 deal, worth EUR150 million, included management of mainframes and servers, as well as the supply of business continuity and recovery services, for six BES banking subsidiaries. IBM claimed that deal would reduce the bank's IT infrastructure costs by 25%.
"We are confident in IBM's ability to deliver and manage our infrastructure services, which was already proven during the previous two year contract signed in 2006," says Miguel Rio Tinto, president, Espírito Santo Informática. "In addition, the quality and the competitiveness of the new offerings led us to select IBM again as a long term business partner."