British Steel Plc is to offload the bulk of its IT operations for the next ten years in a deal with Cap Gemini worth 400m pounds. The deal, thought to be the largest private outsourcing deal in the UK to date, involves the transfer of over 600 scarce IT professionals from BST’s Rotherham-based offices over to Cap Gemini. The signing of the deal follows an acrimonious year long period of negotiations between BST and both IBM Corp and Electronic Data Systems Corp. BST finally rejected both, and opted for Cap Gemini, with whom it has already established a relationship through a separate five year contract worth 100m pounds, negotiated in February 1996. Cap will take over BST’s three major data centers which use IBM & ICL Plc mainframes and will be responsible for supporting over 7,000 desktops. BST said it will retain control of computer technology that is directly involved in the production of steel. BST the largest steel producer in Europe, has an annual revenue of 7.2bn pounds, and exports over 50% of its production.
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