IBM and Nordea ink 10-year, €2.2bn deal

IBM and financial services group Nordea have signed a 10-year deal estimated at €2.2bn deal to transform the Scandinavian firm's IT production services into an on-demand infrastructure.

The deal will see the creation of a joint venture between the two companies, set up to work on the project. It will employ around 900 Nordea employees and will officially come in to existence in November this year. The two companies will jointly staff a Transformation and Innovation Centre to enable Nordea to further cut costs.

Nordea will migrate from a fixed production cost structure to a system whereby the company pays for the systems and technology from IBM's on-demand services. Nordea will also see various jobs associated with IT functions become automated, including workflow scheduling and asset tracking.

Markku Pohjola, deputy group CEO and head of group processing and technology, said in a statement: "This partnership will facilitate a large transformation process to centralise our IT production and thereby reduce IT costs while enabling us to focus more strongly on core business."