March 2, 2009 -- EDS, an HP company, and Aviva announced a 10-year, $1 billion (£700 million) data center services contract to reduce Aviva's operational costs, improve information access and increase flexibility. Under the terms of the agreement, which was signed in February 2009, EDS will transform and manage two data centers for Aviva, the world's fifth largest insurer. The data centers, located in Norwich, England, serve Aviva's businesses in the United Kingdom, India, France and Ireland.
"Partnering with EDS for data center services, in our view, supports Aviva's goals to improve flexibility, increase operational efficiency and lower costs," comments Igal Mayer, UK general insurance CEO at Aviva. "After a thorough evaluation, we chose EDS over other global service providers because of its collaborative approach as well as its unmatched reliability, security and value."
EDS will provide Aviva with data center modernization services as well as management for the insurance firm's mainframe, midrange and Windows servers. Approximately 300 Aviva employees will transfer to EDS to deliver these services.
"The data center transformation will help Aviva increase efficiency, lower risk and reduce costs," says Bill Thomas, senior vice president for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region at EDS. "As a trusted business ally, EDS will draw on its years of experience to help Aviva evolve its technology environment to drive better business outcomes."
HP and Cisco will provide select tools, technologies and resources to EDS in support of Aviva.
As a provider of technology services for the financial services industry, EDS provides a range of outsourced and consulting services – from payments and securities processing to applications development, as well as network, customer relationship management and help desk services – to all sectors of the industry. Aviva is a provider of life insurance and pensions to Europe with substantial positions in other markets around the world, making it the world's fifth largest insurance group based on gross worldwide premiums as of December 31, 2007.
On the Web:
www.eds.com
www.aviva.com
www.hp.com
