Portugal's largest bank, Banco Comercial Portugues, has signed a ten-year, EUR340 million, IT infrastructure outsourcing deal with IBM.
The move reflects a strategic decision by BCP to gain flexibility on its investments and cost savings in the IT area.
Under the agreement, IBM will manage BCP's IT infrastructure, mainframe and iSeries servers, the IT centre, the hosting of Unix systems, and business continuity and disaster recovery operations. As a result of the deal, BCP expects to reduce its IT infrastructure costs by 25%, within a short-term period.
A recent Datamonitor survey of financial technology spending at 150 European financial institutions found that 68% were planning to increase their investment on IT infrastructure rationalisation.