BP bonanza for IT services providers
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IBM, Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Accenture all sign IT outsourcing contracts with petroleum giant
It was a good day for IT services providers yesterday as petroleum giant BP announced new contracts with many of the big names of the industry as it refreshed its outsourcing strategy for the next five years.
IBM, for example, won a five-year contract “to manage and run all of the oil giant's enterprise applications and integrated service desk responsibilities”. According to the vendor, it was the largest of the contracts awarded.
Indian IT outsourcing companies Wipro, Infosys and TCS all won five-year application development and management contracts from the company, as did technology and management consultancy Accenture.
This week, analyst company Gartner outlined the pitfalls of multi-sourcing (using multiple outsourcing providers to balance risk and cost). When organisations multi-source their IT operations, it said, individual deals can be difficult to build and manage, they often fail to deliver the expected outcomes, and it can be difficult evolve deals into strategic partnerships.
“Organisations that excel in sourcing have seamlessly integrated all providers, aligned all parties behind one goal, developed an agile sourcing environment and achieved business impact through targeted IT spending,” said Frank Ridder, research director at Gartner. "Others who lack the right competencies are more likely to experience sourcing inefficiencies caused by misalignment, idle resources, unnecessary processes, overloaded operations, a heavy inventory, or a lack of focus.”
BP is also BO (Big Oil). It is the world's third-largest integrated oil concern, behind Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. BP explores for oil and gas in 29 countries and has proved reserves of 18.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent. People have been getting curious about the Thunder Horse platform. To clarify, the Thunder Horse platform is an oil rig that is about 150 miles off of New Orleans, in the Gulf of Mexico, run by BP. BP being short, of course, for British Petroleum – that's right, a British Company is drilling for American Oil. Well, they've found a lot of it – the rig estimates up to or over 300,000 barrels a day. (All profits going to Britain, not to America.) The rig was originally named Crazy Horse, but the descendants and the Lakota (or Sioux) objected. That translates to a lot of instant cash for the owners of the Thunder Horse platform, as long as the weather doesn't cause any Thunder Horse pickles.
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