Sapa signs five-year services agreement with IBM

Sapa has signed a five-year global services agreement with IBM to operate the IT infrastructure for all of its 200 locations around the world.

With the new agreement, which covers services for servers and workstations supporting 11,000 employees worldwide, Sapa will be able to use a cloud infrastructure including SoftLayer, an IBM company, for new workloads to support its rapid growth and expansion into new geographies.

"As one of the largest companies in Norway, Sapa requires a high level of flexibility and scalability. We are delighted that Sapa has once again placed its trust in us, and on a larger scale, expanded our relationship with IBM cloud solutions," says Arne Norheim, Country General Manager of IBM Norway.

"This contract demonstrates how IBM's global delivery model is helping our clients advance their global strategy. The agreement almost doubles our commitment to Sapa, which has been outsourcing much of its IT infrastructure to IBM for six years.”

"Standardization, flexibility and delivery performance are key factors in the contract, which is of great strategic importance to our business following the merger between Sapa’s and Hydro’s extrusion operations in 2013," says Espen Falla, Sapa’s Chief Information Officer. “IBM's delivery makes it possible for Sapa to move from two very different IT infrastructures into a single globally integrated environment, with common processes and applications.”

The outsourcing contract was signed on June 6, 2014. It includes all of Sapa's IT, with a particular focus on expanding Sapa's IT delivery model with new cloud solutions that improve security and mobile device management. The contract will remain in place for five years.

Increased flexibility
The outsourcing contract with Sapa is built on IBM's global delivery model, which provides standardized IT services and centralized administration. This ensures that Sapa maintains a high level of availability, flexibility and security.

“Consumption-based charges’ is a modern concept for outsourcing clients, which are transitioning away from a ‘fixed charges’ model,’” says IBM’s Norheim. “Organizations want to be able to move up and down the cost portfolio in line with fluctuations in their own business. This requires the IT delivery to be more flexible, which is further enabled by the cloud."

“IBM's ability to understand and adapt to Sapa's requirements as our business expands has been central to the partnership," says Falla. "Sapa is a global company, but we have been able to base our agreement in Norway, thanks to IBM's service delivery model, which enables the company to serve us globally. The agreement confirms the efforts both parties have made to extend and expand our relationship.”

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