HP Services Touts $1.5B Outsourcing Win

HP Services Intria-HP Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Even as it dissolves that partnership, HP Services said it has won a seven-year IT outsourcing deal with CIBC.

By virtue of this piece of business, valued at $1.5 billion, CIBC has become HP Services' largest managed-services client, said Ann Livermore, executive vice president of HP Services.

It's also the biggest deal HP Services has signed since its merger with Compaq was completed earlier this year, she said this morning in a conference call with reporters.

Livermore said that nearly 1,300 IT professionals with a financial services background will be joining HP Services as a result of the Intria-HP buyout, the terms of which were not disclosed.

Intria-HP clients include Halliburton and General Motors. Besides the additional head count, which Livermore said would not displace existing HP Services employees, HP gains two data centers in Toronto where many of Intria-HP's IT management operations were conducted.

Describing the data centers as "top flight," Livermore also said that an increased HP Services presence in Toronto will give the organization access to the "phenomenal hiring pool" there and make the Canadian capital a key site in HP Services' global footprint.

In the outsourcing deal won with CIBC, Livermore said, HP Services will operate platforms from Sun, Microsoft and IBM as well as HP.

Because of the Intria-HP deal, "we are taking on the 1,280 people who have been managing this environment, the people who have been managing the Himalaya, Solaris and Tandem environments," Livermore said. "They will continue to do this work for CIBC.

"One of the things that is very important in being a large IT services player is that we have to deal with whatever is in our customers' environment," she said. "As much as we would like it to be all HP, we have to be able to address" whatever products and platforms are in use.

"When you sign a contract this size," she added, "you typically need to hire [still more people."

Last month, HP said Microsoft had selected HP Services to maintain help-desk services for some 60,000 Microsoft employees and contractors.

Terms were not disclosed.