IBM has signed a five-year agreement with Canadian Pacific to provide application development and support for the railway’s corporate functions (including finance, accounting and HR), marketing and sales.
This includes CP’s intermodal business, an area of significant growth for CP, and its Business & Information Technology Services (BITS) Capabilities Program. This strategic agreement will provide CP with enhanced capability and quality while realizing a greater yield on their I.T. investment.
“IBM and CP have a long and successful track record,” said Kathryn McQuade, Executive VP and COO, Canadian Pacific. “IBM has once again demonstrated the strength of their capabilities, this time in the application services field. Their globally integrated delivery model, transportation experience and extensive SAP expertise put them in the best position to support our corporate function, marketing and sales and I.T. We are confident that IBM will continue to provide the technology leadership required to meet the critical needs of our railway and our plans for sustained long-term growth.”
To provide support and development for CP’s corporate functions, IBM will utilize its global SAP expertise and experience to support and enhance all of the finance, procurement, invoicing, mechanical maintenance and engineering functions. IBM will further leverage the SAP platform to create a seamless customer and supplier experience and assist with additional development of logistics services.
IBM will also help CP develop its BITS Capabilities Program and its next generation of IT functions and services. This program will include enterprise portal services, application-to-application messaging, identity management and IT asset management. Over the term of the agreement, IBM will move CP towards an SOA framework.
“Our goal is to help CP improve the systems that manage railway operations and customer shipments by leveraging our deep application services competencies in Canada and abroad and our indepth understanding of CP’s application landscape,” said John Ostrander, VP, IBM Global Services. “We will bring our industry leading rail and transportation knowledge to CP to help maximize their efficient railway operations, while supporting future development of the railway’s intermodal transportation operations and its requirements for just-in-time and door-to-door service.”
This new agreement, which was signed in late June 2007, continues the already successful, long-term partnership IBM has with CP. In fact, the earliest recorded sale of any IBM-related product in Canada came in 1901 when the International Time Recording Company — a predecessor to IBM — sold time recording equipment to Canadian Pacific Railway. More recently, in December 2003, IBM and CP signed a seven-year, $200-million infrastructure outsourcing agreement.
