Accenture Loses Two Big Deals to CSC CSC grabbed the headlines in the IT-services sector with two major contract awards. The biggest and most intriguing win came with the U.K. National Health Service, where it took over two big deals from Accenture, which formed a key part of the much-maligned Connecting for Health (CfH) IT-modernization program.

Accenture had been trying to wriggle out of the contract, as its rigid terms were hampering its scope to make profits. It will hand over control of the North East and East Midlands regions to CSC by Jan. 8, ’07. CSC’s other big award was by the U.S. Air Force, which awarded it a task order worth approximately $628 million for systems-integration work. CSC will be the prime contractor for the deal, which covers a full scope of services for the Air Force’s Expeditionary Combat Support System supply chain program. The new system is intended to replace more than 400 legacy systems.

The benefit of being the captive IT-services operation of a wealthy parent organization was underlined by T-Systems last month, when it was awarded a $2.3 billion contract extension to support the IT infrastructure of sister company, T-Mobile. T-Systems also outlined plans to increase its proportion of revenue from outside its native Germany to 30% from the current level of 15%.

One of the big challenges facing big outsourcing companies is to renew or extend the deals that they signed in the post-Y2K rush of contract awards. Last month, HP Services signed a seven-year outsourcing extension with DirecTV to the tune of $500 million. The new deal extends its support for DirecTV’s billing environment and relevant infrastructure and applications duties. HP will support and test DirecTV’s CRM and billing systems, including network management, data center operations, database and applications services, systems integration and disaster recovery.

Meanwhile, Perot Systems has won two deals with the U.S. Department of Education worth a combined $217 million for data center services and integration of the agency’s student aid systems. Under the 10-year, $200 million data center contract, Perot will manage hosting and processing services for the department’s student-aid delivery systems. The company also got a separate 30-month, $17 million contract to integrate multiple legacy systems for the department’s network of partners that provide aid under the federal financial aid program.

Very few deals involving offshore delivery ever get made public, but one that did was Welsh Water’s $188 million IT-outsourcing deal with suppliers, including LogicaCMG, Capgemini and top Indian player, TCS. There is the delivery of core IT services, which will be worth approximately $75–$84 million, a technical-transformation program worth $24 million and a business-transformation program worth $94–$112 million.

The deal is yet another example of multisourcing, where clients choose to work with a number of best-of-breed suppliers, rather than enter into a broad-scope contract with a single supplier.