Vangent awarded $2.5bn contract

The US Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has awarded Vangent, a provider of information management and strategic business process outsourcing solutions, a 10-year indefinite contract, states Market Watch.

Vangent will provide IT support services for the FDA's Information and Computing Technologies for the 21st Century programme through a full contract valued at $2.5 billion dollars.

"The contract allows us to expand our relationship with the FDA by leveraging our expertise in providing infrastructure services to a variety of federal government customers," says Mac Curtis, president and CEO of Vangent.

Solutions provider Telstra is preparing to halve the number of outsourcers it uses as part of cost cutting ordered by chief executive Sol Trujillo, says Australian IT.

The decision follows moves by subsidiary Sensis to drop multinationals IBM and EDS from its software testing and application development panel.

Sensis spends between $12 million and $15 million annually on outsourcing services. It has retained IT outsourcers Satyam and Infosys, and Melbourne-based Revolution IT on the panel following a lengthy tender process.

US software outsourcing company CSC will launch a new delivery centre in China, as the global financial crisis may force more Western companies to outsource their business to the country, reports China Daily.

Michael Laphen, chairman and CEO of CSC, says the financial turbulence would force more companies to outsource business in pursuit of lower operating costs, thus creating more opportunities for outsourcing companies.

CSC's new delivery centre, located in Tianjin, will open next spring and will have 500 employees within the next three years, serving domestic and multinational clients in China.