Reuters signs £500m deal with Fujitsu

Outsourcing contract will support 17,500 staff in 100 countries

Reuters is one of the world's largest providers of financial market data

Reuters has signed a £500m 10-year outsourcing deal with Fujitsu to transform the companies' network infrastructure.

The contract includes provision of IT services and support to 17,500 employees based in 100 countries. The Japanese company is the prime contractor in a consortium including Dell, Satyam and BT that will work to modernise Reuters internal network.

'The partnership will allow Reuters to accelerate the development of our internal IT services, giving us greater flexibility to respond to the changing needs of our business divisions,' said Reuters CIO David Lister.

The contract is an example of the growing trend for so-called multisourcing business models, said Ovum analyst Angel Dobardziev.

'Enterprises continue to move away from giving all responsibility to one IT vendor, to a model where they employ several best of breed suppliers managed by a lead vendor,' said Dobardziev.