Siemens Business Services GmbH & Co. OHG (SBS) and Fujitsu Ltd. have struck an agreement to boost the companies’ presence in the area of IT services.
Under the deal, each company will take advantage of the other’s local infrastructure and human resources to support internationally operating customers, the companies said Monday in a joint statement. Thus Fujitsu will be able to offer its Japanese customers local support in Europe and North America, where it doesn’t operate directly, while SBS will be able to offer its customers improved service in Japan and other countries of the Asia-Pacific region.
The nonexclusive, preferential agreement covers a wide range of IT services, including consulting and systems integration and the management and outsourcing of complex IT infrastructures, according to the statement.
The IT services agreement between SBS, which is a fully owned subsidiary of German electronics and engineering conglomerate Siemens AG, and Fujitsu follows an agreement years earlier to merge the European computer operations of the two electronic giants into the 50-50 joint venture Fujitsu Siemens Computers (Holding) BV.
The tie-up with Fujitsu is good news for SBS, which has been looking for an Asian partner for over a year. It comes on top of several other deals the Munich-based IT service provider has announced in recent weeks. In September alone, the company won a contract to provide maintenance and installation services to Hitachi Data Systems GmbH (HDS), a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., and another from the city of Barcelona to deploy an emergency response system.
Also last month, SBS announced the start of two local electronic-government projects in Hamburg, Germany, and Bratislava, Slovakia, in collaboration with Microsoft Corp., as well as a contract to upgrade the IT system of the German air force, Deutsche Luftwaffe.