IBM and Danish Agricultural Advisory Service Sign $13 Million Euro, Seven-Year IT Services Agreement

The Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that they have signed a seven-year, $13 million euro agreement for IBM to manage operations and support for the Service’s Ø90 solution. The Ø90 solution manages bookkeeping, income statement, balance sheets and value added tax (VAT) accounts for farmers in Denmark. The contract is expected to bring significant cost savings for the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service on the operation of Ø90 and extends an existing contract with IBM signed in 2003.

Over 90% of all farmers in Denmark use Ø90 as the accounting system for their farming operations. The solution, which has been used since 1991, was developed by the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and IBM. On a yearly basis, Ø90 is used in making about 40,000 VAT accounts and 20,000 annual reports.
Remote SUN servers will be closed down and operations will be consolidated on IBM’s virtual On Demand Hosting standard environment.

“The new agreement will provide us with significant savings through economies of scale. At the same time, we will achieve greater flexibility because we will be able to quickly adjust our use of capacity up and down according to demand, with resulting cost savings,” explains Niels Peter Skrubbeltrang, department manager at the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service. “IBM was selected on the basis of an overall evaluation of IBM’s ability to operate and maintain a complex IT solution that requires considerable demands regarding availability, response time and scalability,” he adds.

“The agreement confirms the good relationship that exists between the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and IBM, and we look forward to being able to offer the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service continued support for their services to Danish farmers,” says Sven Kolstrup, Country Executive Manager, Global Technology Services, IBM Denmark.

In addition to operations and support of Ø90, IBM also provides the development and maintenance of the solution.

The new agreement was signed in July 2007.