Shell’s MegaCentre will initially provide infrastructure for SAP and e-business solutions. A single-source arrangement has been agreed with IBM as the prime supplier of the hardware for MegaCentre.
MegaCentre is a large-scale, global IT application hosting environment that is consolidated at three regional hubs. The first MegaCentre hubs will be in Kuala Lumpur, The Hague and Houston.
The five-year global agreement includes IBM providing IBM systems, Enterprise Storage Server, tape drives and libraries, Storage Area Network switches, storage management software from Tivoli, and related technology.
Shell has negotiated options for IBM financing, technical support services and maintenance.
Key objectives of the joint undertaking include substantial reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) and establishment of a harmonized infrastructure platform to accelerate deployment of e-business applications.
We were looking for a trusted technology partner to help us achieve aggressive TCO targets in our MegaCentre project, one of the most important IT initiatives in Shell’s history, said Alan Matula, Shell general manager, IT projects and solutions.
The Shell-IBM strategic alliance for MegaCentre follows an announcement earlier this year that IBM and Shell were collaborating on deployment of the world’s most powerful Linux supercomputer for seismic research.
