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By Mel Duvall

IBM and Indian outsourcing firms Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro have been awarded a five-year contract to run the IT operations of BP, one of the world's largest oil and gas companies.

BP has essentially awarded IBM a contract to manage and run all of its enterprise applications and integrated service desk responsibilities. It is the largest of a series of deals BP is making to "simplify business process and achieve new levels of service quality," the London-headquartered company said.

"This contract will enable BP to reduce complexity, whilst lowering our overall cost base," BP chief information officer Dana Deasy said in a statement.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but spokespeople for the Indian firms said the contracts were "multi-million dollar" wins. IBM will manage the oil company's SAP applications, including enhancements and improvements at client sites and from IBM's network of global delivery centers.

Tata said it had been selected for its expertise in the energy sector and that its portion of the contract would be for "engagements in refining, manufacturing and corporate IT," including projects in upstream and trading.

Infosys said it had been selected to "manage and operate a large portion of business systems." Wipro said it had been selected to provide IT applications development and maintenance services for BP's Fuels Value Chain and corporate businesses.

The announcements mark a key milestone in a massive transformation of the IT operations at BP since Deasy took over as CIO in October 2007. Deasy joined BP from General Motors where he served as CIO of GM North America.

Comments (3)

	1. 08-28-2009 15:10
	The deal seems fairly well compartmentalized but it will be interesting to see how collaboration across organization boundaries works among these various service providers. Registered

Fred Kauber

	2. 08-30-2009 19:11
	It will be interesting to see how the deal "reduces complexity." Same applications, same databases, same platforms, same business processes, and four vendors to juggle, none of whom have a stake in BP's success; all of whom have a stake in growing their contracts.    Sounds like the same old "if we outsource it it's someone else's problem" philosophy to me. Registered

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	3. 08-31-2009 09:52
	It makes sense to outsource where they (BP) don't have expertise in-house to handle the front to backend operations of such a large undertaking. If, as Mr. Lewis points out, this is a move to implement “the same old ‘if we outsource it it's someone else's problem’ philosophy,” then I should think Dana Deasy will be out looking for a job soon. If on the other hand, IBM, Tata, Infosys and Wipro all get along, it could signal a new and interesting trend in Large Enterprise for the outsourcing of key pieces of Corporate infrastructure. Registered

Ron Kost

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