The first quarter of the year ended with a major U.S. government procurement. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) awarded a 10-year, $20 billion network-services program to AT&T, Verizon Business Services and Qwest. The three companies will now compete for orders as part of GSA's Networx Universal scheme, which aims to upgrade the current federal telecom network to global IP and MPLS-based system.

India 's Idea Cellular inked a big outsourcing deal with IBM at an estimated $800 million to manage its IT and business processes.

Telecom operators in India are outsourcing to quickly expand delivery platforms and support IT and networks, as they keep pace with the country's six million plus new mobile phone users signing up every month. Besides providing infrastructure management services, IBM will handle a number of Idea's internal processes including billing and payments, credit collection, customer-relationship management, subscriber and fraud management. The deal will be run on a revenue-sharing basis.

IBM is tipped to win a similar deal with Hutchison Essar worth an estimated $1.6 billion later this year.

U.S. electronics retailer Circuit City awarded a $775 million IT outsourcing deal to IBM for over seven years. Circuit City hopes to save 16% costs over the length of the contract.

Meanwhile convenience retailer, 7-Eleven, extended its contract with EDS to provide applications and infrastructure-management services. Computacenter extended its flagships IT-services deal with BT Group to supply and manage its desktop infrastructure.

The Ten Largest IT-Services Deals in March 2007