Zurich Financial Services signs £1.7bn IT services contract

Ten-and-a-half year deal with CSC could see 1,000 staff move to the outsourcer in 2010

Some 1,000 Zurich workers could be moved to CSC

Zurich Financial Services has signed a $2.9bn (£1.7bn) IT services contract with CSC for datacentre and infrastructure services.

CSC will be tasked with integrating global operations, as well as datacentre consolidation and server virtualisation and work will begin after the signing of the first country-specific agreement.

The value of the ten-and-a-half year master contract is still subject to the negotiation of country-specific agreements, but the work will start in the first half of 2010.

The negotiations also include talks with workers unions. It is expected that 1,000 Zurich employees will move to CSC early next year.

Zurich and CSC began working together in 2004 under a seven-year, $1.3bn (£784m) applications outsourcing contract, which was extended in 2008 to include desktop services in Europe and North America.