Eversheds has teamed up with Computacenter in a managed IT services deal worth 27 million that it hopes will give it access to leading edge technology and associated skills and, ultimately, ensure that staff can access core systems regardless of their location around the globe.
Under the terms of the contract, which will see the outsourcing of the law firm's the UK service desk, desk-side support and datacentre hosting, spanning 4,000 users in 32 offices in Europe and Asia, 79 staff members will transfer to the employ of Computacenter.
In addition to 24/7 IT support, Computacenter will also help Eversheds with its technology transformation ambitions, such as the consolidation of its datacentres to two outsourced facilities, the creation of a new virtualised infrastructure and the implementation of new storage and archiving solutions.
"We are a law firm, not a specialist IT provider and this, coupled with the fact that we had finite internal resources, meant that we could never be at the cutting-edge of legal technology," said Bryan Hughes, UK managing partner for Eversheds.
"However, working with an external provider will give us access to far greater resource and cutting-edge technology, which will help transform our service offering and, we believe, give us a real differentiator in the legal marketplace."
The service desk, which will make use of ITIL best practice and remote management techniques, will enable Eversheds in-house resources to focus on other value-added tasks.
"The partnership we have with Computacenter Services will allow us to accelerate the transformation and our service delivery improvement programme. The retained IT team will be free to focus on an extensive programme of innovation across the firm over the next five years that will help us deliver leading-edge business solutions that benefit our people and clients," added Malcolm Simms, Eversheds' IT director.
