Manufacturing giant Honeywell has signed a five-year
outsourcing deal with BT for the provision of communications and
networking services across its 220 European sites.The value
of the contract was undisclosed, but it is thought to be in the
same region as BT’s recent outsourcing deal with Unilever, which
was worth £700m.
Under the
terms of the agreement, BT Ignite, BT's business services and
solutions division, will manage all of Honeywell's voice
communications, PBX management, local area network infrastructure
and management, mobile and video communications and internet
access.
BT Ignite
will also manage Honeywell's wide area network, migrating the Wan
from frame-relay/ATM to an Internet Protocol based virtual private
network.
Based on
multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), the IP VPN will enable
Honeywell to improve the management and performance of its network
while delivering cost savings at the same time, BT Ignite said.
Honeywell's decision to upgrade the network was based on the need
to centralise the control and prioritisation of traffic and
applications running over it, said Juan Sanchez, vice-president and
chief information officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at
the company.
"Honeywell's global strategy is to focus on our core business and
outsource areas that fall outside this,” he said. “Working with BT,
we will be able to control costs more tightly, improve our business
processes and focus on driving our core business forward."
In a separate deal Computer Sciences
Corporation has won an eight-year, £200m outsourcing agreement with
Basell, one of the world's largest plastics producers.
Under the deal, CSC will assume responsibility
for Basell's global IT infrastructure, including data centre and
help desk operations, networks and desktop computers. The
outsourcer will also implement a global standard operating
environment.