Reuters reaches £500m outsourcing deal

Reuters is aiming to slash IT service delivery costs by a quarter through a £500m outsourcing deal with Fujitsu Services to roll out a standardised IT platform across its global operations.

Around 300 IT staff will transfer across to Fujitsu as part of the 10-year deal, leaving an in-house service delivery team of 25. Reuters said there will be no redundancies.

Reuters chief information officer David Lister said the deal will see annualised savings "in the region of 25 percent".

Lister said: "We see our role as service aggregator, not service provider."

The contract covers Reuters' core IT internal services, including email and desktop, and consolidates a number of existing deals. Fujitsu will also be responsible for the management of some of Reuters' other outsourcing suppliers, such as Satyam.

Lister said: "It addresses a lot of our legacy issues. We have acquired a lot of different systems and platforms over the years. This allows us to move onto a single, standardised, virtualised, on-demand platform."

Virtualisation — both on the client and server — will be a key part of the contract and Fujitsu has already begun work on an 18-month transformation plan.

Lister said: "Whether inside an internet café in Australia, at home or in the office, employees can access workplace applications."