The jury is still very much out on whether IBM Corp will actually be able to make any money on these contracts after the first two or three years, especially since many of them will have been won against Electronic Data Systems Corp, which has years of experience of pitching final bids so as to be sure it won’t lose money on the deal, but the Integrated Systems Solutions Co has landed another monster facilities management contract, this time with Ameritech Corp in Chicago. The contract is to run the phone company’s data center – the biggest mainframe data centre IBM has managed – for 10 years. Observers put the value of the contract at $3,000m to $4,000m. IBM will manage ongoing consolidation efforts, provide help desk services for the data center and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery system. About 106 positions will be eliminated in consolidations but the holders will be offered work elsewhere in Ameritech. Some 550 Ameritech managers will be offered jobs by IBM.
