Deutsche Bank has said it is more than satisfied with
the results of its year-old outsourcing agreement with IBM and
considering expanding its partnership with the
company.
"We are achieving what we set out to do with this outsourcing
deal - reduce costs and increase our access to new technology,"
said Deutsche Bank chief technology officer Clemens Jochum,
speaking at the Strategic IT Management conference.
Just over a year ago, Germany's largest bank outsourced a large
part of its European IT operations to IBM.
The $2.5bn, 10-year contract, which included the consolidation
of datacentres in eight European countries, should save Deutsche
Bank around $1bn in annual operating costs.
Jochum said IT managers at the bank were constantly asked by
heads of the business units "to change this and tweak that" and
preferably at no added cost.
"We were very flexible then but, quite honestly, we don't want
this type of flexibility anymore because, when all the numbers are
added up, it's too costly," Jochum said. "Now we have an exact
price list for every service, something we never had before. We can
see exactly what drives costs. In the past, IT infrastructure costs
were a big black hole. "
Jochum referred to outsourcing as a "very extreme internal
auditing of IT costs".
Jochum admits it is a challenging process - and one that is not
totally free of error. A glitch last year caused an interruption in
service, he said, but even that technical problem underscored the
benefits of having an outsourcing agreement.
Deutsche Bank is exploring other outsourcing opportunities not
only in the area of computer infrastructure but also software.
"We see that [outsourced] coding works well in Eastern Europe
and India," he said.
John Blau writes for IDG News Service