HP, Bank of Ireland near $600M outsourcing pact

IDG News Service - LONDON -- The Bank of Ireland is close to awarding a seven-year IT outsourcing contract to Hewlett-Packard Co., the company said today.
The deal would be worth $600 million and would be the largest IT contract ever signed in Ireland, HP said in a statement.
"HP is our preferred supplier and we're now in negotiation with them. We would expect it to take four to six months before the contract is signed," Bank of Ireland Communications Manager Anne Mathews said.

"We had an exhaustive tendering process and they came out on top," Mathews said. The decision was mostly based on price and cost savings, she said.
HP's Services division would manage the bank's desktops, midrange servers, mainframes, networks and printing systems, as well as provide some customer support and integration help, the company said.
"It's all back-office stuff, only covering part of our IT services and so there are no issues regarding confidentiality [of customer data]," Mathews said.
The Dublin-based bank and HP would agree to share any savings made as a result of lower operating costs, HP said.
About 500 Bank of Ireland employees would be transferred to HP, the statement said.
HP said it currently supplies the Bank of Ireland with desktops, servers and storage systems, and some support services.
The announcement comes days after HP was awarded a 10-year outsourcing contract valued at $3 billion from Cincinnati-based consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co. (see story).