BNP Paribas has signed a long term services agreement with IBM which is reported to be worth up to Euros 1 billion. The key element of the agreement is that BNP Paribas and IBM will set up a single purpose joint venture to transform the bank’s IT into an on-demand infrastructure. Both BNP Paribas and IBM will staff this new entity to help BNP Paribas achieve additional performance improvements and cost savings.
BNP Paribas says it views its IT as a key competitive advantage, and wants to accelerate its response and product-to-market times. The bank believes its joint venture with IBM will enable it to maintain the skills of its staff, to manage its information technology pro-actively, and improve service flexibility. BNP Paribas adds that, once the transformation to an on-demand IT infrastructure is complete, the partnership with IBM will enable the bank to manage costs more effectively.
“BNP Paribas and IBM have a long-term relationship,” says Herve Gouezel, CIO of BNP Paribas. “We share a common vision of technology trends in the banking industry. The strategic alliance of two leaders in their field will be key to BNP Paribas’s future challenges. In addition, this long-term partnership ensures that our technical staff will remain with BNP Paribas. The new entity that we are setting up with IBM is already positioning itself as on-demand reference in the banking industry. It is scalable enough to sustain future growth and adapt to changes in the banking industry.”
BNP Paribas adds that the partnership with IBM is in line with the bank’s strategy of using technology to differentiate itself from the competition. It says it is looking to IBM to provide insight into the use of technology in the financial services industry. “IBM provides value not only by matching technology to business requirements, but also in delivering expertise and insight in banking and financial services,” says Dominique Cerutti, General Manager of IBM Global Services for Europe Middle East and Africa.
The new joint venture will provide services to operate BNP Paribas IT service infrastructures and will employ 450 staff. It will deploy mainframes estimated at 26 billion operations per second (26,000 MIPS), an online storage capacity of 400,000 billion characters (400TB), and 7,000 servers.