Sports clothing retail groupJD Sportshas signed a £2m five-year
IT management outsourcing deal to enable compliance with
thepayment card industry data security standard (PCI
DSS).
IT outsourcing company
Pasporte will migrate and host the back-office applications of
the 350-store group as well as implement systems for near real-time
disaster recovery and wide area network (WAN) management.
Harry Willoughby, IT manager at JD Sports, said, "With our
PCI DSS compliance programme under way, the opportunity to
achieve a better foundation for our IT systems and accelerate our
governance strategy made a compelling business case."
Willoughby said improved
risk mitigation backed up by Pasporte's virtual IT team would
help accelerate PCI DSS accreditation.
The industry standard was developed by credit card companies to
prevent fraud and improve security of payment card data.
Pasporte started migrating JD Sports' applications and data with
a pilot at the end of 2007 using IBM's
Softek replication tool, and is due to complete the project by
May 2008.
Pasporte will also use the Softek tool to synchronise data
between its two hosted datacentres to ensure continuity of the
retailer's IT operations during the migration and in the event of a
system failure.
Willoughby said the business was already benefiting because its
internal IT team had been freed up to work on new ways of using
technology to support business growth.