The UK's Nationwide Building Society is outsourcing the management of its networked IT services to BT under a seven year, £160 million deal.
The new deal replaces a 10-year contract for the supply of managed voice and data services signed in 2004.
Under the new agreement, Nationwide will transfer all voice and data networking infrastructure to BT, including third party contracts and some in-house staff.
BT says under a service transformation programme it will consolidate Nationwide's multiple networks onto its 21CN Global platform, which will support both voice and data services. The vendor will also provide remote access technology to Nationwide's non-office based employees.
Traditionally Nationwide has developed and managed its IT operations in-house and procured point systems from external suppliers where necessary. BT says this contract marks a shift towards a multi-sourcing model for IT services that can provide Nationwide with a reduced overall service cost and improved service flexibility.
Commenting on the deal, Peter Stafford, head, IT infrastructure, Nationwide, says: "Nationwide's growth in recent years has meant that our IT infrastructure has also had to evolve at an exponential rate to keep up with demand and we must now seek the most efficient and scalable infrastructure service possible to support this."
Earlier this year Nationwide's inked a deal to migrate its banking, savings and mortgage operations to the SAP for Banking platform as part of a £300 million business transformation programme.