SAP Software helps win £4.8bn military contract

by Andrew James

After prolonged negotiations with a number of different vendors, German military officials have awarded a 10-year IT contract, worth €7.1bn (£4.8bn), to a consortium which includes IBM and Siemens.

The two companies will own 50.1 percent of BWI Informationstechnik, a new company set up to supply the IT services for the deal named 'Herkules'; the German federal government will own the remaining 40.9% in what has become Europe's largest public-private partnership

SAP has been chosen by IBM to supply the ERP (enterprise resourcing planning) and SCM (supply chain management) software for the deal which involves modernizing and managing the information communications technology of the German Federal Armed Forces. IBM will be responsible for running these business applications and one of there subsidiary companies (SBS) will be responsible for installing and supporting the new IT systems which will include 150,000 PCs, 7,500 servers, 250,000 fixed-line phones and 15,000 mobile phones across more than 1,500 locations in Germany.