Sungard Availability Services has announced the signing of a ten year IT services deal with John Menzies. With daily deliveries to 45 per cent of the UK’s retailers, customers at 144 airports worldwide, and a business that serves over 300 airlines, John Menzies deals with millions of transactions on a daily basis. The business operates out of 31 countries and over 150 locations.

Building on its current IT infrastructure, John Menzies will use the IT environment as a foundation for further investment in new IT and business systems to create strategic differentiation and enhanced operational performance.

As part of the multi-million pound contract, Sungard AS will take on responsibility for John Menzies’ IT network and effect a full transformation of its services to cloud-based solutions designed to provide the agile IT services needed to continue growing both its aviation and distribution services.

The first phase of the project has commenced with the successful migration of Menzies’ SAP environment recovery services into Sungard AS’ main UK data centre. Subsequent phases will include data centre consolidation, enterprise managed services and network managed services – all underpinned by a cloud enablement strategy.

Steve Rick, SVP of John Menzies, commented: “This strategic partnership represents a significant step forward for Menzies, and provides a new platform for further development and innovation. The excellent scalability of Sungard AS’ IT solutions provides us with a cost effective way to scale up to meet our business demands, and the consultancy we receive provides a high return on investment. We are confident that this joint programme will support our continued focus on improving our customers' experience, and we are delighted to work with a global partner with an excellent track record for IT excellence and strategy.”

Keith Tilley, EVP Global Sales and Customer Services Management for Sungard AS added: “Sungard Availability Services has built its success on delivering strong strategic partnerships with forward-thinking organisations like Menzies. With many companies now updating their IT estates by venturing into the cloud on top of their legacy systems, we have seen some fall prey to complexity, which in turn is stifling innovation. However our recent research into this issue found that more than half of businesses saw great successes from working with a partner; including an increase in business agility, improvements in customer service, and the speed of product developments. We’re delighted to have the opportunity to work so closely with Menzies to build a model and methodology that will not just deliver, but truly power the mission critical IT systems that support their global customers’ needs.”

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