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IBM, CompUSA ink services pact

IBM Global Services signs a seven-year, $200 million outsourcing deal to take over all IT applications and data services for CompUSA.

Kim Girard
Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.
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Kim Girard
IBM Global Services has signed a seven-year, $200 million outsourcing deal to take over all IT applications and data services for CompUSA, one of the largest U.S. computer retailers.

Under the deal, IBM Global will support CompUSA's migration to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software from Germany's SAP. SAP makes systems that automate core internal business processes such as order entry, human resource management, or general ledger accounting across an enterprise.

IBM Global will also take over responsibility for IT application development and data center operations that support CompUSA's 210 retail stores nationwide. The deal includes related technical services, training, manufacturing, and call center management as well.

The contract is IBM Global's largest ERP agreement to date with a retailer and is the the company's first outsourcing agreement with Dallas-based CompUSA.

CompUSA executives said the SAP installation will help the retailer consolidate its legacy systems. The overall outsourcing deal will free up the company's IT division to focus more on electronic commerce initiatives and better predict long-term technology expenses, the company said.

Reuters contributed to this report.