IBM wins US$115m server contract with European Commission

9 Dec 2013

IBM Flex System server

IBM and business partner Bechtle AG have beaten competition from Hewlett Packard, Dell and Fujitsu for a US$115m contract with the European Commission (EC) to provide servers to European Union (EU) institutions and agencies in the 27 member states.

The contract is the largest and most comprehensive awarded by the EC for office and application servers. IBM and Bechtle have already provided more than US$2.6m in systems and services to date and expect to deliver over 6,100 System x and Flex System servers and supporting services over the course of the contract.

The contract covers a range of IBM Flex System compute nodes and IBM System x rack server configurations, as well as related maintenance, installation and professional services. This enables IBM to provide highly reliable and flexible platforms that can scale quickly, easily and inexpensively, and are adaptable to the needs of each individual institution or agency.

As the contract is inter-institutional, most of the other EU bodies – such as the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice and Europol – will use the framework for buying their x86 servers in upcoming years. Bechtle will configure and prepare the servers at its headquarters in Germany.

The contract will run for two years and could be extended up to four years. The contract bidding process was managed by DIGIT, the IT directorate general of the European Commission.

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com