BMW has awarded a five-year IT infrastructure operations contract to Indian supplier Infosys.

The contract covers maintenance and operation of the infrastructure that supports the German car maker's SAP implementation, its web and content management systems, its business intelligence platform and its system management software.

To deliver the contract, Infosys will be setting up a new delivery centre in Munich, where BMW is headquartered. The new centre will be part of "a global service delivery team" at Infosys, it said, suggesting that some work will go offshore.

This centre will also allow Infosys expand in the German market, the Indian company claimed.

Infosys's ambitions in continental Europe, and perhaps Germany in particular, were evident in its acquisition of Swiss SAP development consultancy Lodestone, for $350 million, in October last year.

In the 1990s, BMW took the unusual step of buying its own IT services provider, a German company called Softlab. The car maker later spun out the company under the name Cirquent.

In 2008, Japanese IT services provider NTT Data acquired a 73% stake in Cirquent. Cirquent's CEO, Thomas Balghiem, is now NTT Data's EMEA chief executive.