There doesn't seem to be any credit crunching for energy companies who are shelling out for IT deals left, right and centre.
Earlier this week HP scooped a nice and expensive outsourcing services agreement with UK based utilities company Centrica, worth over $400 million, and today Capgemini has announced that it too is in the money thanks to a £100 million (approximately $163 million) deal with EDF Energy.
We suppose that they can afford such contracts as a result of pushing our gas prices up.
As part of the deal, which will run from now until 2015 with an option to extend to a further two years, will primarily focus on providing consistent and standardised services for all users across the company's UK business.
Capgemini will provide service desk, procurement and managed desktop services. This will include support for email, instant messaging and file sharing for the 15,000 EDF Energy IT users.
Some of the services provided by the company will also be performed by "specialist subcontractors" working with Capgemini.
And of course Capgemini couldn't release a statement without having someone patting it on the back. This time the praise comes from Bob Barker, head of client computing & telecoms for EDF Energy.
He said: ‘Capgemini demonstrated a clear understanding of our business needs and offered convincing proposals that will add value to our IT users and to our business. We are confident that working with them will maximise the return on our investment in desktop IT while minimising risk, and we look forward to an excellent relationship with them. Capgemini clearly have great strengths as a people company and we are sure that their teams will work effectively with ours.’
Capgemini in turn paid back the compliment claiming that it was a "privilege to be chosen to provide such a crucial service to one of the UK’s largest and most forward-looking energy companies."
Will the jobs land in the British market where they are desperately needed? It's doubtful.