McDonalds's Corp., which has been one of the few global corporations that have managed to grow during the global downturn of the past 18 months, must be very pleased with the role IT outsourcer ACS is playing as the massive restaurant chain has signed a five-year extension for ACS to continue supplying IT services ranging from desktops to data centers.Saying that "sourcing has been a key component of our strategy," McDonald's CTO and VP Chris Millington offered this comment in an ACS press release:

"The extension of the ACS agreement is a sign of our further commitment to this strategy and to all the positive benefits we've received from our relationship with the ACS team. The future commitment of ACS to the McDonald's technology roadmap will continue to push us forward in our technology journey."

That commitment includes responsibility for the following managed IT services at McDonald's:

• service desk, user access, executive support and security administration; • desktop support and engineering; • messaging services; • mainframe/ midrange server support and engineering; • networking operations and engineering; and • datacenter facilities management.

The deal also calls for ACS to monitor McDonald's applications on an end-to-end basis, including development, testing and quality assurance processes, and production operational performance, ACS said.