E-commerce vendor deal heralds GE Capital gains

GE Capital Information Technology Solutions (GECITS) has landed a deal with IBM and Lotus to provide e-commerce and groupware services worldwide.

GECITS said the alliance, initially covering the US, Canada, Germany and the UK, was the first deal for IBM incorporating hardware, software and services on such a large scale. The IT services company said the number of Lotus and IBM e-business technical certifications held by its systems engineers in North America, the UK and Germany would double in the next six months as a result of the deal. GECITS has 135 such engineers globally.

A representative for GECITS at the company's European headquarters in Munich would not say how the expansion would apply to each individual country and refused to comment on how much the deal was worth.

However, he said the deal will enable GECITS to 'establish an infrastructure on which to increase its competence and expertise in internet commerce and groupware services within Europe'.

'We target the leading 1,000 companies in each country we operate in and we now have a special focus on e-commerce and groupware in addition to our expertise in areas such as SAP and data warehousing,' said the representative.

The representative said no further alliances were planned at present, adding: 'Being completely vendor independent allows us to form alliances when it makes sense for the customer.'

The product focus for the deal will include IBM's merchant server Net.Commerce, Lotus Notes and Domino for e-commerce and IBM Suites for Windows NT.