Serco heads back to school

IBM partner wins education contract

IBM Business Partner Serco has helped Big Blue secure a £4.1m contract to supply a group of South London schools with a range of on-demand IT managed services.

Four secondary schools will initially be involved in the roll-out, which is expected to be completed by September next year. Liz Grant, business development manager at IBM Global Services, said the contract will run for five years.

“We will be involved with the infrastructure as well as the roll-out of hardware and software. Serco is a major player for us and provides industry knowledge. It is a key part of the IBM partner strategy,” she said.

The schools will receive Lenovo PCs with desktop-managed services, software, digital equipment, projectors, LAN upgrades and WAN connections to every classroom.

The roll-out will also be centred on a hosted version of Serco’s network infrastructure system, Facility.

Sat Bains, managing director of Serco’s Learning division, said: “IBM will provide the resilience and we will provide the management information system that everything will run on. We will also provide the schools with ongoing maintenance, using our Facility system”

John Atkins, principal of Kemnal Technology College, one of the schools involved, said: “The combination of the Serco solution and IBM infrastructure will help position each school to achieve greatly improved educational standards.”