Is this the new face of outsourcing? Gas utility Centrica has signed a seven year, $400m outsourcing services contract with HP Enterprise Services UK.
But the deal exposes yet again the fault line between outsourcing and Cloud Computing as Centrica is moving to a private Cloud and a utility-based computing environment.
The move has been on the cards since late last year when Centrica confirmed that it was restructuring an existing desktop and data centre management with T-Systems. While T-Systems continued to support Centrica's Dynamic SAP services, Fujitsu was to take over desktop management while HP stepped in to manage the data centres.
What has now been made clear is that the HP deal involves a flexible Cloud-service-led model which will see Centrica pay for service levels and not server infrastructure. Initially this will be based on HP Utllity Services with a view to moving on to the recently launched ECS Compute public Cloud offering at some future date. HP confirmed:
Dave Bickerton, group CIO at Centrica, says:
Centrica has had some mixed fortunes with outsourcing in the past. In 2008, it sued Accenture for £182 million over a billing system that it says was delayed, fraught with glitches, lost the company customers and damaged the British Gas brand. That legal dispute is still ongoing.
Deals such as the latest HP one emphasise again the importance of the 'traditional' outsourcing providers having a Cloud services play in their portfolio of offerings and capabilities.
