IBM Signs Service Deal with Finland's Samlink

In a recent press release, IBM announced signing of a major deal with Finland’s leading supplier of IT banking and related support services, Samlink.

Samlink selected IBM (News - Alert) to manage the information technology (IT) infrastructure for the company's more than 400 bank branch offices across Finland. In the release, IBM announced that this five-year agreement was signed this month.

Exactly a year ago in November 2009, the two companies signed an IT agreement in which IBM enabled Samlink to achieve greater efficiency in its data center operations.

“Our partnership with Samlink started one year ago when Samlink's infrastructure services across its data center environment were transferred to IBM. The objective was to simplify Samlink's IT infrastructure while increasing its resiliency and efficiency,” said Country General Manager for IBM Finland, Johan Sandell (News - Alert), in a statement.

Under the agreement, IBM will manage overall IT operations and internal workstations for Samlink and its clients including self-service kiosks, wireless networks, workstation and maintenance, desktop, servers, and printers.

Under the agreement, IBM is also going to provide Samlink’s Finnish banking clients a new cloud-based, scalable, faster and cost effective learning environment. Traditionally, education within the banking system has been provided in a fixed personal computer (PC) classroom. With the new desktop cloud-based learning environment, banking employees can take classes from any device at any location. IBM is going to provide this cloud-based learning environment via a desktop cloud solution.

“After a year-long successful relationship with IBM, we are looking forward to developing this partnership further. IBM has proven its industry expertise and capability to deliver high quality services with its ability to offer innovative solutions, such as cloud, that will help our services add more value to our clients, the Finnish banks,” said Heikki Sirve, Chief Executive Officer of Samlink, in a statement.

A year ago, IBM announced signing of a seven-year, strategic outsourcing agreement with Samlink Ltd. Under the agreement, IBM was to manage Samlink's infrastructure services across its data center environment, enabling Samlink to focus on core infrastructure technology (IT) banking service activities while benefiting from new IBM services technologies.