Deutsche Bank Inks $2.5B Outsourcing Pact With IBM Global Services

Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s largest bank, has pulled off an unusual feat in the land of entrenched unions and stiff labor laws: It outsourced a sizeable chunk of its European IT operations. The roughly $2.5 billion, 10-year contract with IBM Global Services, which includes the consolidation of data centers in eight European countries, should save Deutsche Bank around $1 billion in annual operating costs. What’s more, it could prompt other German companies to follow.

At a January IT conference in Dusseldorf, Germany, Deutsche Bank COO Hermann-Josef Lamberti sounded positively American when he talked about the deal. “We aim to push our computer commodity business to outsourcers and drive our application development down deeper into our business units,” he said.

Could other European players follow? “I can’t speak for others,” Lamberti said. “But I can say there is movement in the market.”