Insurer Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) has formed a strategic alliance with IBM to improve the IT support and efficiency of its UK business.
R&SA said it hoped the ten-year contract would cut 10% from its £50m annual IT bill. The move will see 285 R&SA employees transfer to IBM and no redundancies are planned.
The contract covers the management and development of R&SA's IT infrastructure in the UK, which includes mainframe, mid range and desktop computing services.
R&SA said it aimed to use the joint venture to gain a competitive advantage in several IT areas, including e-business technologies.
It added that IBM's involvement would stabilise its IT infrastructure and provide enhanced support for existing operations and the development of new lines of business.
It will also see R&SA and IBM jointly invest in an innovation and transformation centre (ITC) to extract tangible benefits for R&SA from the application of new technologies.
IBM will also develop R&SA's existing computer centre at Lennox Wood near Horsham (West Sussex) to include an e-business hosting facility. From there, it will manage the Web hosting needs of R&SA as well as other IBM business customers."
R&SA's UK chief executive Paul Spencer said: "Our partnership with IBM will also ensure that we are able to fully harness the potential of the internet and other emerging technologies both now, as with the highly successful launch of MORE TH>N, our direct operation, and in the future, creating a platform from which to develop products to meet the ongoing needs and service expectations of our customers."
