Ferrosan Outsources i to IBM, Eliminates Expense and Complicatedness

June 2, 2009 Alex Woodie

The Danish manufacturer Ferrosan will no longer have to deal with the expense and complicatedness of managing an i-based Power Systems and System x server environment as the result of a new seven-year outsourcing deal it has entered into with IBM.

Ferrosan is a privately held manufacturer of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, vitamins, and food supplements that are sold primarily in the Nordic countries of Europe. The company has revenues the equivalent of $250 million last year, and employs 800 people, according to IBM.

In 2006, Ferrosan signed a three-year IT outsourcing deal with IBM. In February of this year, that outsourcing deal was extended another seven years. The deal hands day-to-day control of several core servers and applications to IBM, including several physical and virtual Power Systems servers running Lotus Notes and SAP in i OS, and several physical and virtual System x servers running SAP Portal, the Blackberry e-mail server, and Citrix.

IBM says Ferrosan’s decision to outsource its core IT systems was based on several factors. Before outsourcing, these applications were managed separately at each Ferrosan location, “which was both expensive and complicated,” IBM says. Now that IBM is managing the IT assets, all IT operations are centralized at IBM campus data center in Copenhagen.

Frederik Boettger, Ferrosan’s IT director, says the company is happy to expand its collaboration with IBM. “This agreement enables us to work closely with IBM to design the best possible solution for Ferrosan’s organization,” he says in a press release.

IBM Global Services is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, provider of IT outsourcing services in the world.