After a strong start to the year last month, the IT outsourcing market remained buoyant in February, with a number of big-money, long-term deals being announced.

Contract signing activity was driven by the public sector, with seven of the month’s 10 biggest deals involving government agencies. A consortium headed by Lockheed Martin and including BAE Systems and Global Science and Technology took the biggest deal, a $1 billion award from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to develop and maintain its “Next Generation Identification” system. The Lockheed team beat out competition from rival groups led by Northrop Grumman and IBM, and the latter has filed a protest in the Government Accountability Office, which has 100 days from receipt of the complaint to resolve the issue.

Elsewhere in the U.S. public sector, CSC won two contracts with the country’s Air Force worth a combined $693 million. The larger of the two deals will see the provider give support services to the Air Education and Training Command division, including base operating functions; while under the smaller contract, CSC will supply personnel to manage and perform maintenance for the 57th Maintenance Group at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

Outside of the U.S., EDS followed up last month’s big win with the Flemish government by securing a major deal with the Infocomm Development Authority in Singapore. EDS will lead the oneMeridian consortium, which also includes companies such as Singapore Computer Systems, Fuji Xerox, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Microsoft.

Of the three non-public sector deals that made it to February’s top 10 list, the biggest will see HP provide infrastructure management services for Unilever in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Turkey and the Middle East regions.

The Ten Largest IT Services Deals in Feb. 2008
Customer	Provider	Engagement(s)	Value ($ mn)	Duration (in yrs)
Federal Bureau of Investigation	A consortium led by Lockheed Martin	Application development and support, systems integration	1,000	10
Infocomm Development Authority	EDS	Infrastructure management, network management	935	8
Unilever	Hewlett-Packard	Infrastructure management	675	7
Glasgow City Council	Serco	Infrastructure management	520	10
U.S. Air Force	CSC	Maintenance/support	482	6
Australian Dept of Defense	Unisys	Infrastructure management, managed security services	225	6
Old Mutual Group	T-Systems	Disaster recovery, infrastructure management	222	5
U.S. Air Force	CSC	Maintenance/support	211	7(approx.)
Police Service of Northern Ireland	Fujitsu Services	Desktop management, infrastructure management	196	8
British Islamic Insurance Holdings	Capita Group	Business process outsourcing	172	8