Australian bank outsources to IBM following outage

One of Australia’s leading banks has decided to outsource 425 IT roles to computing giant IBM.

Under the deal, IBM will manage National Australia Bank’s IT infrastructure, desktop environment, printing services and IT support.

The news comes just weeks after a corrupt file caused the bank’s payments processing system to crash. This led to errors in as many as 19,000 customer accounts.

“Keeping the bank safe as well as simplifying and improving our technology is a key strategic priority,” said an executive from the bank, although the deal follows a consultation that began before that outage.

A high proportion of NAB employees that were offered employment at IBM accepted, although a spokesperson for Australia’s Financial Services Union told The Age newspaper that “there is little to no choice for staff” in such a situation.

National Australia Bank was one the companies that dropped Indian offshore outsourcing provider Satyam following the corruption scandal that broke in 2009. 

Pete Swabey

Pete Swabey

Pete was Editor of Information Age and head of technology research for Vitesse Media plc from 2005 to 2013, before moving on to be Senior Editor and then Editorial Director at The Economist Intelligence...

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