Vienna, October, 15 2004 - Wiener Staedtische Group, the leading Austrian insurance group in Central and Eastern Europe, 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.
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 of the Metropolitan Group and the existing IT centres of Wiener Staedtische.
"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 Günter Geyer, CEO 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 co-operation between IBM and the Wiener Staedtische Group. "Wiener Staedtische stands to gain competitive efficiencies by adopting our on demand model and by calling upon our unrivalled ability to transform complex technology infrastructures to enable companies to be more responsive to business change."
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.
"We are confident that the employees transferring to IBM will benefit from improved opportunities for professional development with the world's leading IT Services company," Mr. Geyer said.
IBM will retain the group’s existing computer centres, but transform them using UMI technology to an on demand model to deliver a broad range of high-availability data services to Wiener Staedtische group and other customers.
About Wiener Staedtische group
Wiener Staedtische is the leading Austrian insurance Group in Central and Eastern Europe. Apart from Austria the company is established in Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Liechtenstein, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Belarus and the Ukraine. Sixteen thousand employees service 11 million clients with 14 million contracts in 1.200 branch offices. Every second customer is a non-Austrian. Every third Euro from an insurance contract is signed outside Austria.
For more information go to www.wienerstaedtische.at
About IBM Global Services
IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services and consulting provider, generating record revenue and signings in 2003 of $42.6 billion and $55.5 billion, respectively. Some 180,000 professionals in more than 160 countries help clients integrate information technology with business value -- from the business transformation and industry expertise of IBM Business Consulting Services to hosting, infrastructure, technology design and training services. Leveraging IBM's unequalled scope and scale, IBM Global Services delivers integrated, flexible and resilient processes -- across companies and through business partners -- that enable clients to benefit from the on demand business model by saving money and transforming their businesses to be more competitive. For more information, visit www.ibm.com/services.
More information for journalists
Wiener Staedtische
Barbara Hagen-Grötschnig
Leitung Unternehmenskommunikation
Tel: (0043) 1 53 139-1027
Mobile: (0043) 664-502 96 56
Email: b.hagen@staedtische.co.at
IBM Nederland
Tineke Mertens
Manager Communications
Off: +31 36 545 4594
Mob: +31 6 200 150 92
tineke.mertens@nl.ibm.com