Absa, which is owned by UK financial services group Barclays, said it expects to save ZAR 138m ($19.3m) through consolidating its relationship with IBM, under which the vendor will provide mainframe and storage technology as well as infrastructure management and consulting services.
Absa said it had benefited from the global buying power of its parent company. Barclays shelved plans for a major infrastructure support deal with IBM in 2003, but has engaged with the supplier for a range of consulting and integration projects.
Barclays has adopted a multi-sourcing approach to IT services sourcing, working with a number of suppliers to handle various IT and back-office processes. It signed up Accenture in 2004 to provide application development and management services, uses BT Global Services for network management, and has other major contracts with Xansa, Siemens Business Services, and Getronics.
The Absa unit also works with multiple IT services vendors. Last July it agreed a ZAR 960m ($134m) contract with local supplier GijimaAST to provide managed desktop services.
