FirstGroup signs new £10m services deal with Atos Origin

Transport firm announces second IT services deal this week

Rail and bus company spends big on IT services

Transport provider FirstGroup has invested a further £10m in IT services, following its announcement yesterday that it has signed a £14m desktop services deal with Computacenter.

The new deal, this time with IT services provider Atos Origin, will see Atos furnish the transport provider with datacentre and messaging services as well as most of the core IT systems underpinning the group’s operations.

The agreement is valid for five years and worth more than £10m.

Atos Origin will take over management and development of applications for FirstGroup’s legacy and SAP systems to support back-office functions such as HR, finance and procurement.

The deal will see Atos Origin hosting and supporting a range of FirstGroup’s IT systems in Wintel, Linux and Unix environments. It will also host the related LAN and SAN infrastructure.

In addition, the IT services provider will establish and run two UK datacentres for FirstGroup and build a new email system to support 10,000 employees.

The contract will be delivered from the UK with support from India for applications management and development.

The deal follows another multimillion-pound application development, installation and support contract that Atos Origin signed with FirstGroup earlier this year.

That project was for the consolidation of three separate Customer Information control systems of the First Great Western train operating franchise, from when First Great Western was three separate franchises.