Centrica's datacentre move to HP still not complete after three and a half years

Centrica is yet to transfer its entire datacentre operations to HP despite signing a contract with the supplier in 2010 to replace T-Systems.

The delay highlights the challenges of outsourcing business-critical legacy systems.

In December 2010, Computer Weekly revealed that Centrica was replacing T-Systems as service provider for its datacentres and desktops. HP won the datacentre contract and Fujitsu took the desktop contract. T-Systems continued to work with Centrica on cloud-based SAP services.

A few months later, Centrica made the $400m deal with HP public. The agreement saw HP replace T-Systems for datacentre services, including building a utility-based private cloud.  But now, more than three and a half years later, HP has still not moved all of systems to the HP datacentres and T-Systems is still running some legacy systems.

A source told Computer Weekly that a lot of Centrica's systems have moved to HP, but many older systems are still with T-Systems.

Centrica had not responded to Computer Weekly's questions when going to press. T-Systems said it would not comment on a customer and HP was not available.

Under the original contract, all systems were supposed to have been transferred within 18 months. A source said only now, 40 months after the contract was signed, is Centrica close to completing the migration. “Although the bulk has gone, there are still some legacy systems being run by T-Systems,” the source said.

Moving outsourcing contracts has caused problems for organisations before. Also in 2010, the Department for Work and Pensions signed a  £300m desktop support deal with Fujitsu, but cancelled it before it had even begun.

The DWP ended the six-year contract, signed in February 2010, in March 2011. Sources said at the time that Fujitsu had failed to meet its transition targets. A phased transition from HP was originally expected to see Fujitsu assume responsibility for the service on 1 September 2010.