Deutsche Bank has signed a five-year deal with service
provider Getronics, to provide IT service desk and desktop
services.
The contract is worth £55m-£80m and covers 24,000 Deutsche Bank
employees primarily based in the US and UK. It also expands on
Getronics' current three-year relationship with the bank, providing
services for Deutsche Bank's remote users.
Getronics said it already has assets and infrastructure in place
in 30 countries in which Deutsche Bank operates, and can deliver
services in 60 more.
Deutsche Bank will begin to move desktop services from IBM
Global Services over to Getronics this month, with full service
delivery starting in November 2005.
The bank is a major user of Citrix-based thin clients and
servers, and said in October 2004 it planned to cut the number of
PCs it owns by adopting more thin clients and back-end
servers.
At the time, Henry Fieglein, Deutsche Bank’s director of global
architecture, said thin clients are easier to maintain than PCs,
and said. “We are moving towards a total instant office.”
Fieglein added that in future Deutsche Bank employees will
access not only applications, but also other desktop functions such
as voicemail via their thin clients.
Kevin Roche, Getronics vice-chairman of the board of management
and executive vice-president for Americas, said, “Over a third of
our business is in financial services, which brings an even broader
depth of experience to our knowledge of Deutsche Bank's specific
environment and needs. Since our remote global infrastructure is
already in place, it is an easy and natural step for us to expand
the services we already provide.”