05 Mar 2009

Companies shake hands on $1bn data centre agreement

A solutions provider has agreed to deliver its data centre services to an international insurance provider.

EDS, a partner company of Hewlett Packard, will transform and mange two data centres owned by Aviva in a $1 billion (£700 million) deal.

The agreement will see EDS modernise the facilities in Norwich, UK, with the aim of serving Aviva businesses in India, France and Ireland.

"After a thorough evaluation, we chose EDS over other global service providers because of its collaborative approach as well as its unmatched reliability, security and value," says Igal Mayer, UK general insurance chief executive officer of Aviva.

He adds that the move will improve flexibility, increase operational efficiency and lower costs.

Yorkshire Water recently announced it has upgraded its data centre operations in order to address future storage issues, replacing key operations and boosting capacity from 47 to 900 terabytes.