IBM’s Services Group Expands Bank Relationships Globally

IBM's (Armonk, N.Y.) services group has been busy renewing contracts with banks throughout the world. The company most recently announced deals to extend relationships with Canada's National Bank Financial Group and Japan's Daishi Bank.

National Bank Financial renewed its infrastructure management services contract for seven years in a deal valued at CDN$450 million. Under the new contract, IBM will help the Financial Group achieve its strategic sourcing agenda and will manage the group's IT infrastructure including mainframe, server management and end-user services. IBM will also oversee a major transformation initiative to implement new server technologies, standardized processes and an integrated set of enterprise tools. The objective is to simplify the bank's IT infrastructure while increasing its resiliency and efficiency.

This represents the early renewal of a contract signed in 2001.

Meanwhile, Daishi Bank has extended its outsourcing contract for an additional six years. As part of the agreement, IBM Japan will manage the operation and maintenance of the company's information system and the development and maintenance of the applications.

The new contract will extend the outsourcing scope to include planning support, operation and maintenance for the information system and applications. Additionally, IBM will provide central processing unit (CPU) and software resources according to the mainframe usage needed for accounting or information related operations. This agreement follows the original 10-year agreement.

These announcements come close on the heels of several other deals IBM made this month with Sun Life Financial (Canada), Kurmanchal Bank (India) and Hokkoku Bank (Japan)

"There are a lot of enterprises dealing with a tough environment, looking for ways to reduce costs, conserve capital, and in some cases, just to survive," Scott Morin, IBM VP of strategic outsourcing, financial markets, told BS&T. "So there's a lot of good services opportunity out there. For the customers that are trying to save cost and conserve capital, we can adapt our offerings to help them do that. IBM's value has shifted to the high end to address clients' needs to consolidate and virtualize their environments as well as increased focused on cost reduction, risk management, and integration services."