Atos, an international IT services company, has signed a 10 year contract worth in excess of £100 million with EDF Energy to provide data centre services for its UK business. The new Atos solution will consolidate EDF Energy’s data centre infrastructure to cut costs by 20% over the life of the contract.

Ursula Morgenstern, CEO for UK and Ireland at Atos, said: “This contract extends our relationship with EDF Group and represents the start of a long term partnership between Atos and EDF Energy in the UK. It also consolidates our leading position in managed services in Europe following the acquisition of Siemens IT Solutions and Services in 2011 and demonstrates our strength in the UK market in infrastructure outsourcing.”

Nigel Pettifer, EDF Energy Head of Data Centres, said: “Throughout the rigorous 12 month procurement process, Atos clearly demonstrated that it had the expertise, capability and capacity to meet our business needs in the UK. The new solution will enable us to run our business more cost effectively while improving the resilience and flexibility of our IT infrastructure.”

Under the new contract, Atos will provide EDF Energy with significant additional data centre capacity to meet increased demand, whilst also enabling its services to be flexed up or down according to requirements. Atos will rationalise the existing data centre facilities and introduce services from its own global network of data centres, as well as implementing new technology solutions to further improve service resilience.

Over 100 employees from EDF Energy are transferring to Atos and will continue to be based at EDF Energy locations. Atos and EDF Energy have worked closely together to ensure a smooth transition for all employees.

Atos is one of the leaders in managed services and cloud computing with 30 major data centres, 900,000 SAP users and management of more than 90,000 servers globally.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Redpoint Energy and Baringa Partners have announced today that they are planning to merge to create an organisation with a depth of expertise in the European energy space on a scale that is unparalleled.

The merger, likely to happen in Spring 2012, will establish Baringa’s Energy Advisory Services (EAS) practice as a combination of the analytical, policy and energy market capability of Redpoint with the advisory capability of Baringa. The current Redpoint Directors will join Baringa Partner Jayesh Parmar to form the practice leadership team. EAS will sit alongside Baringa’s established market-leading transformation capability across the energy value chain, and will position Baringa as one of Europe’s largest teams of dedicated energy consultants.

Explaining the decision to merge, Phil Grant, Director at Redpoint said: “Redpoint Energy and Baringa Partners share a common set of internal and external values, have worked closely together since Redpoint’s foundation in 2004, and already have an element of cross-ownership.”

Grant continued: “Our intention is to build on the strong platform of growth both organisations have experienced over recent years and service our clients with an end-to-end policy, regulation, strategy and delivery capability.”

Commentating on the unique position of the combined entity, Mohamed Mansour, Managing Partner at Baringa, said: “The energy landscape in Europe is changing dramatically, with policy responses to environmental and security of supply concerns, evolving supply and demand side technologies, and dramatically changing global market dynamics. Our clear shared vision is to be the advisor of choice in helping our clients shape, define and deliver change in European Energy markets.”

Mansour continued: “The combined organisation will provide the market with an unparalleled advisory capability offering high quality analysis and advice alongside transformation and performance improvement services. And it will enable clients to make the most of the opportunities while overcoming the challenges that the new landscape presents.”

The merger will also support the growth plans of Redpoint and Baringa, including expansion into new regions as well as enabling more ambitious investment in people, services and intellectual capital.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

CHICAGO, August 17, 2011 – BAE Systems, Inc, a leading defense, security and aerospace company, has awarded a seven year procurement services contract to Xchanging (LSE:XCH), the business process and technology services provider. As part of this innovative arrangement, Xchanging will provide sourcing and supply base management services for $800m of BAE Systems, Inc annual indirect procurement spend across most categories of indirect goods and services including Information Technology and Telecommunications, Transportation, Contract Labor, Industrial Supplies & Services, Utilities, some Professional Services and others. Xchanging will also provide procurement management activities related to reporting, supplier and contract management. The contract runs through July 2018 with an option to extend for an additional three years by mutual agreement.

Xchanging helps customers around the world drive sustainable improvement in supplier costs and process efficiencies associated with the procurement process. The contract reflects Xchanging’s position in the global procurement services market and firmly establishes its position in the Americas region.

“We consistently seek opportunities to reduce cost, improve efficiency and increase speed to market,” said Dennis Bent, Vice President Strategic Sourcing, BAE Systems, Inc. “Outsourcing indirect procurement to Xchanging enables us to access top procurement talent supported by a proven approach to sourcing that will provide value to our business.”

Scott Dever, Managing Director for Xchanging Procurement Services in the Americas, said, “We are excited to be adding BAE Systems, Inc. to our broad customer portfolio and we are proud to be associated with such a high-performance, professional organization. This agreement opens up tremendous opportunities for growth and establishes Xchanging as a strong provider of procurement services in the Americas.”

Ken Lever, Xchanging CEO commented, “We are delighted to extend our relationship with an existing customer of Xchanging. This contract not only enables us to deliver value to BAE Systems, Inc, it also acts as a springboard for Xchanging Procurement Services in the fastest growing procurement outsourcing market globally.”

Source:   www.top-consultant.com

Deloitte UK has appointed Chris Harrop to head up its nuclear capital programmes team. He joins from Horizon Nuclear Power where he was a project director. Harrop will lead a team of 100 nuclear experts.

Harrop has unique experience of recent British nuclear new build project development and project execution. Chris worked on the first Chinese commercial nuclear programme and more recently as the project director for Horizon Nuclear Power (a joint venture between EON and RWE), in the development of their UK nuclear new build programme. Chris was also project director lead for AMEC Nuclear Business.

Daniel Grosvenor, head of Deloitte’s nuclear practice, said: “Chris’s appointment clearly shows Deloitte’s investment in our market leading nuclear industry advisory team. He adds another dimension to our ability to help clients meet the challenges faced by the nuclear industry today.”

Harrop said: “I was keen to work for a successful company, with exciting projects both inside and outside the UK. The Chinese market remains the dominant market for significant energy and infrastructure projects, and investment in the Middle East is strategically important in terms of new nuclear. My role at Deloitte will be to develop and deliver new business within these growing UK and overseas markets.”

Source: www.top-consultant.com

Capgemini UK plc, part of the Capgemini Group, has won the bidding to supply leading UK energy company EDF Energy with a spectrum of IT support services under a new outsourcing agreement. The contract is for an initial three years with options for a further two years. The value of this partnership is around £100 million over the period to end-2015.

Under the new contract Capgemini will provide service desk, procurement and managed desktop services, including support for email, instant messaging and file sharing, to 15,000 EDF Energy IT users, with some services being provided by specialist subcontractors working with Capgemini as prime contractor. A key focus of the new contract is to provide consistent and standardised high-quality services for all users across all business units in the UK.

EDF Energy said that Capgemini was successful because of its convincing and innovative proposals to reduce the operating costs of desktop support while delivering an updated service with strong user focus and in line with the energy company’s own continuous improvement plan. Other important factors were Capgemini’s expertise in data security, its commitment to EDF Energy’s sustainable IT programme and its proposals to reduce power consumption while maintaining and enhancing service levels.

Bob Barker, Head of Client Computing & Telecoms for EDF Energy, said: “Capgemini demonstrated a clear understanding of our business needs and offered convincing proposals that will add value to our IT users and to our business. We are confident that working with them will maximise the return on our investment in desktop IT while minimising risk, and we look forward to an excellent relationship with them. Capgemini clearly have great strengths as a people company and we are sure that their teams will work effectively with ours.”

He added that Capgemini’s collaborative approach and commitment to flexibility were important in order to future-proof the company against developments involving additional services or user numbers, and in view of the EDF Energy investment programme in low-carbon generation including new nuclear and wind.

The award of the contract involves the transfer of a number of IT specialists from EDF Energy and its incumbent IT suppliers to Capgemini and its subcontractors under TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment) regulations. The majority of the Capgemini team working on the EDF Energy contract will continue to be based in the UK.

Alison Gallagher, Capgemini’s Client Director for EDF Energy, said: “It is a privilege to be chosen to provide such a crucial service to one of the UK’s largest and most forward-looking energy companies, and we look forward to working with EDF Energy on a long-term basis. We also warmly welcome those IT specialists from EDF Energy and its incumbent IT suppliers who are joining Capgemini as new employees as a consequence of this contract.”

Capgemini UK has worked with EDF Energy for over ten years and its scope of work has grown considerably within that time.

Source: Top-Consultant

This collaboration will achieve the critical task of separation of IT operations from Electricity North West’s current service arrangement. Electricity North West owns operates and maintains the electricity distribution network throughout the North West of England.

Wipro will set-up new data Centres and configure virtualized and high availability infrastructure, migrate and upgrade, where necessary, all applications supporting the Electricity North West business. Wipro will also leverage its global remote infrastructure management to provide a fully managed IT Services based on the ITIL v3 Service Integration model.

Andy Funnell, CIO, Electricity North West said “We believe Wipro’s demonstration of a strong industry competency, a mature global delivery model, alignment with our near-term and long-term objectives and a compelling value proposition made Wipro the supplier of our choice to enable IT separation and support our business strategy over a five year horizon.”

Anand Padmanabhan, Senior VP and Head – Energy & Utilities, Wipro Technologies said “We are privileged to partner with Electricity North West on their strategic journey of IT separation. This opportunity extends our footprint in the UK Energy and Utilities industry and positions us as a partner of choice on engagements involving Transformation and end-to-end Managed Services. This deal underscores Wipro’s leadership position in the Energy and Utilities space in the UK market.”

Source:  Top-Consultant