Morgan Stanley announced that its Individual Investor Group will draw its computing resources from IBM's on demand infrastructure. IBM Global Services will provide computing, storage, bandwidth, application management, and help desk support for roughly 20,000 Morgan Stanley employees as part of the contract, which is an extension of an overall 1999 outsourcing arrangement and another utility computing deal struck between the two companies in September. "We're helping [Morgan Stanley] to further marry business process to underlying technology that we control, which is the culmination of everything we talk about with on demand," said IBM Global Services financial markets vice president Eric Ray. "We'll be overseeing everything from infrastructure to security to applications running on the shared infrastructure, which is something unique in the financial services market." IBM said the deal bolstered its on demand strategy, as an increasing number of major companies entrust IBM to provide critical technology underlying their day-to-day business operations. Morgan Stanley Individual Investors Group President John Schaefer said the agreement ensured critical technology provision from experts who understood Morgan Stanley's business. IBM and Morgan Stanley formulated a sophisticated pricing scheme that, together with IBM's on demand infrastructure capabilities, will allow the Morgan Stanley unit to pay only for the computing resources it uses. This type of automation should reduce costs for Morgan Stanley while insuring top-notch service from IBM, which hosts other customers on a shared infrastructure. Copyright 2004 INFORMATION, INC. |
