Wiener Staedtische Teams with IBM for IT Services

Wiener Staedtische Group (www.wienerstaedtische.at) and IBM have signed a seven year IT services deal to transform the IT infrastructure of the insurance group and its subsidiaries into an on demand structure.

"This agreement will enable our company to focus more strongly on our core competences and is an important step for us as a pioneer and trend-setter in the financial sector,'' explained Gunter Geyer, CEO of Wiener Staedtische.

As part of the agreement, responsibility for management of the IT infrastructure - including application-hosting, network, central server system and various business applications - for both the main group and its subsidiaries - Wiener Staedtische Allgemeine Versicherung AG, Donau Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG and Metropolitan Datenservicegesellschaft m.b.H. - will transfer to IBM by the end of the year, along with approximately 200 employees from the Metropolitan Group and the existing IT centers of Wiener Staedtische.

"This is a further endorsement of our ability to manage such large deals and deliver real improvements in efficiency and flexibility that directly support our clients' business strategies,'' said Dominique Cerutti, general manager of IBM Global Services, Europe Middle East and Africa, as he emphasised the long-term cooperation between IBM and the Wiener Staedtische Group.

As it transforms its IT infrastructure, Wiener Staedtische will benefit from a more flexible architecture that can be dynamically aligned with its business structure. This will enable Wiener Staedtische to deliver new and improved services as quickly as its clients demand.

IBM will retain the group's existing computer centers, but transform them using IBM's Universal Management Infrastructure (UMI) technology to an on demand model to deliver a broad range of high-availability data services to Wiener Staedtische Group and other customers.