HP and NEC form outsourcing alliance.

This new alliance, built on existing collaboration in systems integration, will initially target global customersHP (NYSE:HPQ) and NEC Corporation (Nasdaq:NIPNY) announced that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to form an alliance to jointly provide outsourcing services to enterprise customers. HP and NEC may form joint ventures for the delivery of these outsourcing services. The announcement was made in Tokyo by Carly Fiorina, HP chairman and chief executive officer, and Koji Nishigaki, NEC president.Under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding, HP and NEC will initially target global customers based in China, Japan and the United States with plans to expand to other regions, including Southeast Asia and Europe, in the future. HP and NEC plan to establish a joint marketing team to develop and market new service offerings.The companies expect to deliver a full range of flexible, cost-effective outsourcing services tailored to customer needs. These services would range from selective managed services to comprehensive outsourcing, in which the alliance would take over a customer's IT assets and associated human resources.Customers would benefit from HP's high-quality service management methodology and global support structure, including its operation management centers, as well as NEC's experience in providing outsourcing services and in the development and operation of open, mission-critical systems. Customers also would benefit from the companies' complementary geographic strengths."Enterprise customers, particularly those with large scale IT systems, are increasingly turning to outsourcing to reduce costs and to respond to business changes rapidly," said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, HP Services. "This alliance is a powerful combination of HP's worldwide presence and leadership in open, distributed environments as well as NEC's extensive experience with large-scale projects and knowledge of mainframe and open, mission-critical technology."The new alliance builds on the existing relationship between HP and NEC, which includes a strategic collaboration to deliver large-scale, open, mission-critical solutions and services for targeted global industries. HP and NEC have jointly delivered complex mission-critical solutions in the financial and telecommunications industries, among others."NEC and HP are already successfully expanding the global reach of NEC's open, mission-critical systems, which make 24x365 operation and fast response to changing market demands possible," said Toshiro Kawamura, senior vice president and member of the board, NEC Corporation. "We decided to bring together each company's rich experience, resources and know-how to work towards gaining leadership in the outsourcing business, which is expected to enjoy double-digit growth."HP Services helps customers design, build, integrate, manage and evolve their IT infrastructures to help make them more adaptive, thus reducing costs and enabling companies to be more agile. HP Services has 65,000 services professionals in 160 countries.In addition to developing open, mission-critical systems, NEC has been providing various services to about 2,500 users, ranging from ASP services to core system outsourcing that addresses the individual needs of customers in financial, manufacturing and other industries.