Security firm selects Fujitsu IT services

Security company G4S has outsourced its IT infrastructure and services to Fujitsu and has agreed a £32.9m seven-year contract.

Three business units in the UK and Ireland will be supported by Fujitsu, which will provide cloud computing capabilities.

The systems which currently support the G4S units covered by the deal will be migrated to Fujitsu datacentres and the supplier will also transform the computing capabilities of workers.

Server and storage technology will be put in two different datacentres which will connect to each other to provide disaster recovery. Fujitsu's cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) architecture will deliver applications, so workers will be migrated to Windows 7 and a Citrix desktop virtualisation. This will serve 3,500 desktops and laptops, and 10,500 e-mail clients. The project will be complete in March next year.

G4S is planning to make acquisitions, and the cloud-based nature of its infrastructure means it will be better able to increase its computing resources as required.

"IT is a core enabler for our merger and acquisition activity across the group, so being able to scale our IT levels up and down to meet our changing requirements is essential," said Declan Hunt, IT director at G4S Cash Solutions UK.

Earlier this month, home credit provider International Personal Finance (IPF) announced that it was moving its IT infrastructure into a Fujitsu private cloud. It signed a £10m three-year contract with Fujitsu to host its applications and data and charge on a pay-per-use model, and has embarked on a 12-month project to move its IT infrastructure into the private cloud which will cut costs by millions of pounds and make its planned expansion easier.

• See IPF's project in detail here.