Tesco Bank has signed a deal with Cable & Wireless for managed data centres and hosted telephony.
Under the deal, the supermarket bank will use the services at its insurance and banking customer service centres in Newcastle and Glasgow.
Tesco Bank launched in 1997 and has 6.5 million customers. It offers savings accounts, loans and credit cards, and insurance for cars, homes and travel. It operates an in-store, phone and online business model.
The managed data centre and telephony services will run on C&W’s next generation network, which the supplier said was “fully scalable” and flexible.
Tesco recently appointed former IT director Philip Clarke as chief executive. The company has made a large number of IT changes in recent years, including introducing systems to improve sales, the supply chain and efficiency across the company. Tesco has an in-house designed supply chain application, running on IBM system p servers based on Unix.
One area in which Tesco has made extensive efforts over the past year is in stock management. The supermarket has implemented more efficient ordering systems and introduced better in-store monitoring processes, which helped to increase availability of food in stores and reduce warehouse stock.
Craig Cockburn | Published: 16:15 GMT, 17 November 2010
How is a new datacentre for a bank related to the second article about food stock levels?