Telecom Italia has hired Hewlett-Packard to handle its
entire desktop computing environment, which is used by about 90,000
employees.
The five-year outsourcing contract is worth €225m (£153m) and
HP's largest so far, said Juergen Rottler, HP's vice president of
marketing and strategy alliances.
"It always depends on how you look at a deal over the course of
its life, but I think starting out as an initial announcement, this
is the largest deal in desktop outsourcing we have closed to date.
That's not to mean that maybe prior deals haven't grown bigger than
this one by now, but as an initial deal this is the biggest
ever."
The services HP will provide span the entire scope of the
European telecommunications giant's desktop computing, including
asset management, help desk, maintenance and management
services.
"We're providing a complete lifecycle outsourcing service for
their desktop computing environment," said Rottler.
About 600 Telecom Italia IT telecom specialists will move over
to HP, where they will staff a new HP division devoted to providing
desktop services, initially just to Telecom Italia and possibly to
other clients in the future.
Telecom Italia decided to outsource these desktop functions in
order to save money, focus on its telecommunications operations and
have more flexibility in adapting its desktop infrastructure as its
needs change, Rottler said. He declined to say how much Telecom
Italia expected to save, other than that it would be "a
double-digit percentage savings" over the current cost.
The agreement also calls for HP to buy from Telecom Italia the
desktop infrastructure it will manage and lease it back to Telecom
Italia, a transaction that is factored into the value of the
contract.
"As part of the overall deal we also agreed to be using some of
Telecom Italia's SAP hosting capabilities in our delivery of SAP
[outsourcing] engagements," Rottler said.
The contract will become operational once worker unions and
regulatory authorities sign off on it, Rottler said. It is possible
that the scope of the engagement could be expanded beyond the
desktop environment in the future.
The companies also announced that HP will use Telecom Italia
facilities to host SAP applications from HP customers in Italy.
Telecom Italia will bill HP for these services separately from the
outsourcing contract as these hosting deals are struck, he
said.