Nectar service company to outsource IT

Loyalty spin-off farms out key technology infrastructure

Loyalty Management UK (LMUK), the company that runs the Nectar retail loyalty scheme, has outsourced its IT infrastructure in a spin-off operation.

The new subsidiary, Loyalty Management Services (LMS), will provide services to LMUK and other retailers outside the Nectar programme.

It will use blade servers, storage, networking, load balancing and firewall services from vendor Savvis to run its IT applications on a pay-as-you-go basis.

‘The deal is strategically key to setting up this business services company, where the entire LMUK infrastructure will sit,’ said former LMUK chief operating officer and LMS managing director Simon Hawks.

‘The infrastructure will allow us to break down our services into components, from data cleansing and address management to white-label loyalty solutions.’

Hawks says LMS will not hold customer data but only process and manage it, passing information back to retailers.

‘There is a certain element of a services-oriented architecture approach in this deal,’ he said.

‘The existing relationship we had with Savvis made for a natural progression into a utility service for the new business.’