Accenture announced that it has been awarded a 10-year
technology consulting and outsourcing contract by the Thomas Cook Group, which
includes the transformation and management of the travel group’s technology
infrastructure across Europe. The financial terms of the contract were not
disclosed.
Under the agreement, Accenture will design and implement
an agile IT infrastructure that integrates the travel services company’s
separate European IT structures into a single group organization.
This new infrastructure will draw on public and private
cloud technologies to help transform IT operations, processes, methods and
systems to provide a platform for the efficient growth of the business. In
addition, Accenture will deliver technology infrastructure
management, IT service delivery, service management, service desk, data center
services, workspace services, network services and security services.
Accenture will also provide finance and
accounting BPO services to Thomas Cook as part of the contract, in addition to
extending by three years a 10-year contract signed in 2007 for Accenture to
provide application management, technology infrastructure management, finance
and accounting, human resources and payroll services to Thomas Cook’s UK
operations, and by seven years, a five-year contract for hotel settlement support
services for Thomas Cook Germany.
We are delighted to expand our collaboration with
Accenture to leverage their world-class expertise and capabilities in
transforming our IT operations by implementing new, lean technology that is
cloud enabled,” said Gary Edwards, group CIO at Thomas Cook Group.
The Thomas Cook Group recognizes the benefits of
Accenture’s technology and outsourcing assets, people, processes and tools,”
said Martin McPhee, a senior executive in Accenture’s Infrastructure Services
group.
This includes the huge advantage that leaner technology
brings in terms of flexibility and the ability to react rapidly to both the
changes in the market and demands from Thomas Cook customers. By expanding our
successful collaboration, Thomas Cook and Accenture will create a simplified
European IT platform that supports and enables Thomas Cook Group’s future
growth aspirations,” McPhee added.
Accenture will draw on its infrastructure partner
ecosystem to deliver a best-in-class solution. With Cisco, Accenture is
delivering scalable ‘any-to-any’ connectivity, supporting Class of Service
(CoS), ready to transport VoIP, video, unified communications, and
collaboration across a simplified and highly optimized single network using
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology.
Cooperating closely with Lufthansa Systems, Accenture
will use virtualization, automation and cloud-based services to deliver
Infrastructure as a Service. This will enable Thomas Cook to streamline
applications and data centers while delivering business-level security and
reliability.
These services will be provided ‘as a service’ to
enable Thomas Cook to scale up and scale down infrastructure capacity without
changing the service constructs and the way in which new users are provisioned.
By working with Accenture, Thomas Cook will also
consolidate the number of existing vendors. Accenture will deliver the services
from both client locations and Accenture’s Global Delivery Network.
Accenture recently announced that it has signed
a $16.5 million IT application services agreement with the European Parliament
to develop, maintain and support a variety of applications across the
Parliament’s operations.
The agreement is designed to support the European
Parliament’s overall information technology strategy and to drive greater
operational efficiencies across the institution.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
