Earlier this month, the big blue has found itself in a hot water again, disagreements over the company’s outsourcing contract with US state, Texas lead to an ultimatum from the state to fix the alleged problems involved in their outsourcing deal. The tech company IBM is no stranger to outsourcing contract disagreements, just a few months ago the another states Indiana filed a lawsuit against IBM in turn filed a counter suit against Indiana for payment owed by the state for the revamp and modernization of Indiana’s. The lawsuit from problems with basic service delivery, in the case of Texas on the other hand, the lawsuit stems. The IBM promised an investment in people, processes and technology to bring the benefits of data center consolidation of the state of Texas. They have had continual problems with the basic service delivery and IBM has failed to deliver on their promises.
To fix the problems, the states is then giving IBM 30 days specifically to fix a large number of service problems and 19 alleged contractual breaches. An ultimatum is easier demanded than done considering the numerous complaints that Texas has raised against IBM which include moving the Information Technology operations of 27 state agencies into tow new consolidated data centers. The IBM has only been able to move less than 12 percent with 5 agencies completed and 5 currently undergoing consolidation.
In the notice by Robinson is that IBM has failed to provide verification for all managed systems whether backups are in fact performed as scheduled and completed successfully. The IBM is required to verify that backups are completed without error within 24 hours of the scheduled backup. The IBM has failed to respond in a timely manner to backup failures despite urgent requests from agency staff. The states also alleges that IBM failed to reduce the rate of turnover of assigned personnel below the contractual threshold of 15 percent. The annual turnover rate since the start of the contract has been 20 percent to 45 percent.
The Texas allegations are unfounded and does not hold enough weight to merit the termination of their contract. The IBM meanwhile has stuck to their guns. They are looking at each of the numerous shortcomings since the very beginning of the contract which indicates that IBM is not one to not the finger back to Texas for the problems. The company had been given a notice to cure for data back-up deficiencies, this is not the first time for Texas and IBM to have a conflict in their contracts.
REFERENCE:
http://www.blog.infinit-o.com/ibm-hot-water-outsourcing-contract-texas/
