Hewlett-Packard Wins Services Deal With Italian Phone Company

Hewlett-Packard has won a $243 million contract to manage computer technology for Telecom Italia. Under terms of the five-year deal, unveiled Friday, HP will provide the Italian phone company with asset management, help desk, maintenance, and management services for 90,000 PC seats.

About 600 IT telecom specialists at Telecom Italia will transfer to a services group that HP is creating to manage the deal. Juergen Rottler, a services manager at HP, says the agreement guarantees specified levels of cost savings for Telecom Italia but declined to be more specific.

As part of the deal, Telecom Italia also will physically host servers through which HP offers customers in the Italian market access to SAP business software. "There's some reciprocity here," Rottler says.

Some details of the arrangement remain subject to ratification by labor unions at Telecom Italia. For instance, the extent to which HP can move some of the support work offshore requires union approval.