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IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has signed a ten-year, approximately US$85 million managed services agreement with Emirates airline. The agreement will enable Emirates to focus its efforts on highly strategic initiatives, while IBM handles the day-to-day management of its IT infrastructure.
Signed in Q3 2017, the new agreement expands upon a services agreement signed in 2016 and will see IBM manage and transform the underlying IT infrastructure which supports Emirates' mission-critical global operations. This will assist Emirates to benefit from improved business application performance, a resilient, scalable, and agile environment, and operational savings.
IBM will also manage Emirates' backup environment and implement a private cloud solution at the airline's two data centers in Dubai, UAE. The private cloud will provide Emirates with access to a self-service portal which will be managed by IBM and allow Emirates' business teams to order infrastructure services for their internal consumption.
Emirates' global footprint spans more than 155 cities, in 84 countries across six continents. In an effort to streamline Emirates' global operations, IBM will also provide data center networking services to enable employees to have access to Emirates' core IT environment and business critical applications remotely, at any time of the day, regardless of their geographical location.
"Under the new agreement, Emirates will benefit from a resilient, scalable and agile service, as well as operational savings," said Amr Refaat, General Manager, IBM Middle East and Pakistan. "With its expanding global footprint, it is imperative that Emirates' IT operations are streamlined and accessible to its employees anywhere and anytime, and this is where our expertise comes into play to achieve this."
Neetan Chopra, Emirates Senior Vice President, IT Strategic Services said: "A key component of Emirates' IT strategy is to transform our data infrastructure to a cloud architecture, and drive both agility and efficiency benefits. IBM has been our long standing partner and we are happy to work with them to achieve this goal."
The agreement builds off of the ten-year and approximately US$300 million agreement Emirates signed with IBM in 2016 to provide IT Infrastructure delivered as a service, allowing the airline to improve the efficiency of its passenger support systems and functions. In the same year, Emirates also collaborated with IBM to enhance its Passenger Service System (PSS) to facilitate the re-design of its business processes and to streamline airport operations.
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