SunGard Availability Services, a provider of Information Availability services, has signed a five year contract with Serco Group, a British government services company.
This new arrangement will see SunGard take responsibility, on behalf of Serco, for its UK IT Infrastructure and undertake a technology transformation - offering Serco and, where appropriate, its customers the opportunity to move their current estate to a virtualised, managed hosted model, utilising a range of cloud based services and dedicated platforms managed by SunGard.
With the assurance of a reliable, global data centre provider, this IT transformation will allow Serco, an international service provider, with clients across the public and private sectors, to focus on their core business offering as a transformational provider of integrated services.
Measured by strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs), during the first part of transformation, SunGard will implement a dedicated Private and Managed Public Cloud, based on SunGard Enterprise Cloud and Managed Hosting Services. In addition, SunGard will provide Serco access to its recovery services portfolio.
Under the terms of the agreement, SunGard will also be expanding its own technology capabilities - creating a fully resilient Technology Centre in Birmingham, the fifth in SunGard's UK portfolio, aimed at providing IT resources, skills and experience to ensure optimum availability, reliability, security and cost-efficiency.
Garry Fingland, CIO at Serco, said: "Part of our own plans to deliver integrated services to our operating businesses meant that we needed to work with a technology partner who understood and supported our ambition to continually deliver improved efficiency and effectiveness to our customers through excellent quality, service and flexibility.
"As an established provider of managed availability services, SunGard can offer a more scalable, accessible and innovative Data Centre offering for our customers."
Keith Tilley, managing director UK & Ireland and executive VP Europe, SunGard Availability Services, commented: "This agreement reinforces our belief at SunGard that giving customers a tailored approach is key to gaining trust as a technology partner.
"The strategic intent we've demonstrated towards working with Serco to build its systems integration capability, underlines our commitment to the open and transparent culture we pride ourselves on. As the partner of choice, we understand the flexibility required and the approach organisations like Serco need to take in order to ensure they are entrusting their IT assets to someone they know will invest in the partnership."
