HP snares seven-year outsourcing contact with Elders

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 06 December 2011 12:22

Hewlett-Packard has secured a seven-year infrastructure and applications services agreement with Elders that will see the 172-year old rural services company use cloud technology to cost effectively deploy its enterprise technology refresh program.

Under the agreement, Elders will use HP enterprise cloud services for deployment of its Project Connect program, giving the company secure processing capacity and real-time data access that will enable it to rapidly adjust to the changing business conditions inherent in agribusiness.

Elders CIO, Shaun Hughes, said outsourcing to HP was a core part of the company's transformation program,' and he said HP's cloud would provide a 'robust infrastructure and service delivery model that enables us to scale up for each of our program releases, and the applications methodologies and tools HP brings to the table enable us to de-risk the legacy development components of our build.'

Alan Bennett, vice president, Enterprise Services, HP South Pacific, said HP would provide applications management to Elders, while also moving much of the legacy applications environment to a private cloud, which will provide a platform for developing, testing and production. 'As a result, Elders will realise improved applications performance, quality and reliability backed by measurable service levels.'

Bennet said HP would deliver all infrastructure and applications services to Elders from its global delivery HP centres in Australia and the Philippines, 'which give clients like Elders greater flexibility and cost efficiencies while minimising risk.'

'Firms like Elders realise this sort of longevity by knowing their business and customers. The HP team will use our deep technology and applications experience, combined with our knowledge of cloud computing to help Elders achieve its next level of innovation.'

Under the multi-year agreement with Elders, HP will also provide a full scope of infrastructure technology outsourcing services to modernise and refresh the technology environment - HP data centre services will help to ensure high availability of IT services and continuous reliable operations and HP will provide network management services to remotely manage and monitor Elders' 540 distributed networks across Australia.

To protect Elders' business, HP will deliver a set of security services, and will also deliver workplace services for all of the company's computing devices, including desktop and notebook PCs, handheld devices and printers.