10-Year, Multi-Million Pound Agreement Between IBM, Royal & SunAlliance

LONDON - IBM (NYSE: IBM) has penned a 10-year IT services agreement with Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) to manage its IT infrastructure, and also provide end-to-end service integration across all of R&SA’s third-party technology suppliers. The agreement extends the scope and term of the 2001 agreement between IBM and R&SA.

Jim Williams, IS director at Royal & SunAlliance, said: “This is a truly transformational deal for R&SA and our customers. It’s a major commitment, and ensures that we have the right foundations in place to deliver an enhanced end-to-end service model. The deal represents a significant investment in our IT software and hardware across all areas of our UK business, and ensures that we are able to offer the best possible service for our customers.”

The contract covers the operations and support of R&SA’s entire IT infrastructure -- including its mainframes, mid-range servers, desktops and e-business services. IBM will provide a flexible solution expected to bring cost savings to R&SA, enabling the company to improve operational efficiency and customer service.

“This deal allows R&SA to focus on its core business, while IBM manages its entire technology infrastructure,” added Andrew Spencer, Vice President, Financial Services Sector, IBM Global Technology Services. “In this truly transformational deal, both companies will collaborate closely and leverage their respective strengths in order to improve R&SA’s operational efficiency and the flexibility of its systems and processes in order to allow it to innovate even more.”

As part of the deal, IBM and R&SA will share joint architectural design authority. Through its Service Integration Model, IBM will be responsible for infrastructure management in the integration of services across approximately 40 third-party technology suppliers. The deal moves R&SA to a more streamlined and standardised architecture in which the application migration factory from IBM Application Management Services will be used to help transform and migrate away from the company’s legacy infrastructure.