Barclays Signs Support Agreement With Getronics

Deal prepares bank to cope with future changes on the desktop.

Barclays Bank (London, GBP 330 billion in assets) has signed a five-year, $240 million agreement with Getronics (Amsterdam), which will provide desktop and application management support to over 30,000 employees of Barclays, most of whom are in the United Kingdom.

The deal covers three areas: workspace management, application services, and technology transformation. Workspace management includes client-site IT support; and application services encompasses desktop provisioning and maintenance, access control, and call center support.

Finally, the technology transformation component includes "migrating [Barclays] to future versions of operating systems [and] service projects, moving them from one current technical state to a future one," relates Michael Kerr, vice president, channel renewal, Getronics.

As an example, if Barclays were to deploy a new operating system such as Microsoft Vista, Getronics would manage the rollout. "We'd be positioned to migrate that across the desktop if and when they make such a decision," says Kerr. "Knowing that we have the capability to deploy this effectively across the whole popluation would be important, but the client would make the decision on such things."

Getronics replaces EDS (Plano, Tex.), which had previously provided IT support to the bank. "The first job is to rapidly take over the support services, so there's no interruption of services to the client," says Kerr. "We have the teams deployed, we have the program program and management office, we have the whole infrastructure, and we also have a good deal of experience in handling major global handovers such as this." "The key is a very strong program management office, with sets of tools, project plans, and mutual agreement with the client," adds Kerr.

Getronics will serve Barclays primarily out of the U.K., but it will also draw upon its operations support center in Spain and a service center in Hungary. "Getronics has implemented, over the last number of years, a global network of support centers," notes Kerr.