Leading global services company Dimension Data has won an upgrade and outsource contract with Parmalat SA, in a deal valued at R60 million over five years.
The partnership will control and contain IT costs for the South African dairy subsidiary of Parmalat, one of the world`s foremost international food companies.
"The relationship enables us to accurately forecast IT spend for the five-year outsource period and assures us of a stable IT platform to support our mission critical business applications," says Jaco van Lill, Parmalat SA`s financial director.
Parmalat operates in 30 countries on six continents. It employs 40 000 people and annual sales exceed $6 billion worldwide.
In 1998 the organisation entered the South African market by acquiring two prominent South African dairy companies, Bonnita and Towerkop. Parmalat SA, headquartered in Stellenbosch, operates six production units and an efficient national distribution network, which also services Botswana as well as handling exports to neighbouring states and other countries. Manufacturing and distribution facilities in Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia further strengthen Parmalat`s presence in Africa.
The merger of the two companies meant that Parmalat SA had a number of disparate systems throughout the organisation.
"We needed to refresh our entire infrastructure, including servers, desktops, software and networking," says Van Lill. "We also needed to be able to control IT costs. Negotiations with Dimension Data resulted in the company taking over our IT department, and contracting a complete IT service back to us."
This outsource relationship, delivered as part of Dimension Data`s Global Services Operating Architecture (GSOA), focuses on network management and application support, and includes strategic consulting. Dimension Data will be delivering its Insite (monitoring), Uptime (maintenance) and TeamSource (outsourcing partnership) GSOA services.
"The outsource relationship is bringing efficiencies through bridging onsite capabilities with remote expertise and services from our extensive national and international knowledge and skills base," says Daniel van Wyk, Dimension Data account manager.
Dimension Data will initially stabilise Parmalat SA`s IT environment before migrating the company from a Novell to a Microsoft platform, including Active Directory, an implementation involving approximately 700 users across eight sites.
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