Centrica CIO quits to join HP

David Bickerton, the global chief information officer at Centrica, has resigned from the utilities giant, Computer Weekly can reveal.

He will be joining Hewlett-Packard in mid-January 2012. His job title and future responsibilities have not been disclosed. Centrica signed a seven-year, $400m (£247) cloud outsourcing deal with HP in February 2011.

Bickerton became group CIO at Centrica in June 2010. Back then, he said that his brief consisted of "identifying appropriate integration opportunities while supporting the individual businesses."

Prior to taking up the global Centrica role, Bickerton was the CIO of British Gas for nearly five years. In that job, he rebuilt the firm's IT department from scratch after severing ties with its key IT supplier Accenture in a highly-publicised legal battle over a billing system.

The current CIO at British Gas is David Cooper, the former TalkTalk CIO who left the telecoms company earlier this year.

The news marks a return to the supplier environment for Bickerton, who joined the utilities firm after working for Fujitsu and ICL where he held a number of general management roles.