Computacenter wins XP deal

Reseller picks up 500-desktop contract with ChevronTexaco

Computacenter has won a Microsoft XP contract with energy company ChevronTexaco Upstream Europe to upgrade 500 desktops and laptops at its Aberdeen offices as well as at a number of offshore sites.

The reseller has a team that specialises in providing technical project management expertise to the energy sector.

The Computacenter staff, based at the reseller's Scotland division, will jointly implement the new systems with ChevronTexaco's internal IT team.

Andy Purvis, sector director at Computacenter in Scotland, said in a statement: "An increasing number of companies are taking steps to consolidate their IT infrastructures on to standard operating systems, hardware and applications."

He added that standardisation gives businesses greater control over their IT systems, and helps reduce the costs associated with managing and supporting IT infrastructures.

Richard Ashmore, managing director at reseller Deverill, which has customers in the energy sector, said that this industry is a growing customer base for the company because it wants to keep its costs down and is turning to the channel for technical support.

"Many energy companies are under pressure to keep costs down and one way they can do this is through resellers and service providers taking control of their IT infrastructure because they can do a better job," he explained.

The roll out of Windows and Office XP is part of ChevronTexaco's global standardisation of its IT infrastructure in 180 countries.

Jim Boyle, programme manager at the company, said in a statement: "The standardisation will help simplify the development and deployment of applications, and reduce the complexities of managing technology in a global enterprise."

But Ashmore said that there has not been much urgency from Deverill's customers to upgrade to XP.

"People are not going for upgrades at the moment because they have to see the business benefits and we cannot show this with XP at the moment."