Insurance group Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) has extended the IT infrastructure services contract it signed with IBM in 2001 by signing a new 10-year deal. It has also inked a five-year, multi-million pound contract with Cable & Wireless for a complete network outsource and a hosted IP infrastructure, covering all aspects of its telecoms and network IT requirements until 2012.
IBM claims the deal is worth in the range of $400 million to $500 million for the added scope and timeframe beyond the four years the initial deal had left to run. IBM will manage R&SA's IT infrastructure, and also provide end-to-end service integration across all of R&SA’s third party technology suppliers.
In the telecoms outsourcing deal, Cable & Wireless will take full responsibility for delivering communications solutions to all R&SA UK sites. Specific services that it will deliver as part of the outsource contract include voice, wide and local area IP networking, mobility, conferencing, contact centre services and managed security.
Cable & Wireless has been a provider of core communications services for R&SA since 2002. Jim Williams, IS director, Royal & SunAlliance, said: "The deal represents a major investment by R&SA and we have spent the last few months working with Cable & Wireless to determine how we can provide great service with improved telephony and web capability for our customers. The focus on customer service was the primary reason for selecting Cable & Wireless, which when combined with its market leading services will transform how we do business."
Royal & SunAlliance also has a business process outsourcing (BPO) contract with Accenture, which delivers claims and underwriting processes for personal and commercial lines of business to the insurance group from its delivery centre in Bangalore, India.