A consortium led by BT Group Plc has signed a 46.9m-pound ($82m), five-year deal to provide IT and network services to transport company FirstGroup Plc.
The deal is notable because BT will work alongside Hewlett-Packard Co with which it entered a major alliance in 2004 to collaborate on network and IT infrastructure management deals. The two companies announced their first joint deal under the partnership last September with car rental firm Hertz.
BT and HP will also work with MegaPath Networks to upgrade FirstGroup’s communications infrastructure to include new wide area networks covering 700 sites in the UK and 300 in North America. The consortium will also manage FirstGroup’s current data services, implement two new data centers and a central helpdesk, and deploy a rationalized set of applications on thin client architecture.
