Wiener Staedtische Signs IBM's Largest-ever Austrian IT Services deal

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ARMONK, N.Y. & VIENNA - 15 Oct 2004: Wiener Staedtische Group, the leading Austrian insurance group in Central and Eastern Europe, and IBM have signed a seven year IT services deal to transform the IT infrastructure of the insurance group and its subsidiaries into an on demand structure.
As part of the agreement, responsibility for management of the IT infrastructure - including application-hosting, network, central server system and various business applications - for both the main group and its subsidiaries - Wiener Staedtische Allgemeine Versicherung AG, Donau Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG and Metropolitan Datenservicegesellschaft m.b.H. - will transfer to IBM by the end of the year, along with approximately 200 employees from the Metropolitan Group and the existing IT centers of Wiener Staedtische.

``This agreement will enable our company to focus more strongly on our core competences and is an important step for us as a pioneer and trend-setter in the financial sector,'' explained Gunter Geyer, CEO of Wiener Staedtische.

``This is a further endorsement of our ability to manage such large deals and deliver real improvements in efficiency and flexibility that directly support our clients' business strategies,'' said Dominique Cerutti, general manager of IBM Global Services, Europe Middle East and Africa, as he emphasised the long-term cooperation between IBM and the Wiener Staedtische Group. ``Wiener Staedtische stands to gain competitive efficiencies by adopting our on demand model and by calling upon our unrivalled ability to transform complex technology infrastructures to enable companies to be more responsive to business change.''

As it transforms its IT infrastructure, Wiener Staedtische will benefit from a more flexible architecture that can be dynamically aligned with its business structure. This will enable Wiener Staedtische to deliver new and improved services as quickly as its clients demand.

``We are confident that the employees transferring to IBM will benefit from improved opportunities for professional development with the world's leading IT services company,'' Mr. Geyer added.

IBM will retain the group's existing computer centers, but transform them using IBM's Universal Management Infrastructure (UMI) technology to an on demand model to deliver a broad range of high-availability data services to Wiener Staedtische Group and other customers.