Amsterdam, Wednesday 3 July - IBM and ING, the international banking and insurance company based in The Netherlands, have signed an e-business-on-demand contract. The contract, which runs for 10 years, is a first-of-a-kind e-business on demand deal within the financial industry. IBM Global Services will provide cutting-edge market data and applications for the financial market traders in ING´s dealing rooms all over Europe. This gives the ING traders access to optimized information on a pay-as-you-go basis. The e-utility application will be hosted by IBM's leading edge e-business hosting centers.
This decision by ING is primarily driven by the need to improve operational excellence and cut cost of ownership, which are key to staying competitive in the financial arena.
This e-business on demand project will act as a change agent standardizing service across ING Bank's local entities and the ING Group companies, and thus complying with the group's overall Shared Services strategy.
Under the contract IBM will deliver standardized business processes as utility services. The IBM e-business hosting centers provide an intelligent infrastructure that offers a high level of security to ING trading floors across Europe. This first-of-a-kind e-business on demand solution is purposely designed to deliver future business functionality, via the same utility infrastructure.
"Our goal is to ensure that ING is the world's best user of information technology and that we get a complete solution in a flexible, scalable way." said Eric Dralans, COO & Director of IT Operations Europe, ING Group. "With IBM we have found a partner that can deliver a complete business process on demand, helping us optimize our processes and get measurable value."
Tosca Colangeli, Director e-business on demand solution sales, commented: `This is a true example of e-business on demand through to the core, delivering a critical business process as a utility service. Here we can use our strong expertise in the finance industry to help ING transform their business.`
About IBM Global Services
IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services provider, with approximately 150,000 professionals serving customers in 160 countries and annual revenue of about $35 billion (2001). IBM Global Services integrates IBM's broad range of capabilities -- services, hardware, software and research -- to help companies of all sizes realize the full value of information technology. To learn more visit:" http://www.ibm.com/services." http://www.ibm.com/services
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