KONE Corporation, listed on the Helsinki stock exchange, and T-Systems, the corporate customer arm of Deutsche Telecom, today announced a partnership in which KONE will be outsourcing all of its Data Center operations, SAP landscape and service for its workstation systems around the world to T-Systems. KONE is one of the world's largest elevator and escalator companies with operations in more than 50 countries, 40,000 employees and more than 1000 local offices around the world. KONE manages all of its global business operations through a central SAP system. In the future, KONE will be sourcing this software as a cloud application from the T-Systems Data Center in Munich, Germany. In addition, the Telekom subsidiary will also assume responsibility for running other corporate applications and databases. Since the employees of the elevator and escalator specialist provide customer services at various locations around the world, KONE will also be sourcing its communication and collaboration software - Exchange, Lync and SharePoint - as cloud services from T-Systems. The central platform, which is located in the T-Systems Data Center in Munich, will enable KONE employees to collaborate with their colleagues around the world at all times, from any of the company's sites. More ever, T-Systems is providing service support for all workstation systems at the customer's international locations. T-Systems will rely on its service desks in China and Spain to deliver these services, thus giving KONE employees access to desktop experts around the clock. "Since our workforce spans the globe, and because we want to give our customers and employees the best high-quality service possible, we need an IT partner who is at our side around the world, supporting us anytime and anyplace," says Kati Hagros, CIO of KONE Corporation. "We selected T-Systems after a careful evaluation process. T-Systems is a cloud-computing pioneer that can offer KONE the scalable platforms and global delivery capability we need. We were also convinced by T-Systems high-quality portfolio of standardized component services and we expect to improve the maturity of our service management processes significantly." Gartner considers the agreement between KONE and T-Systems one of the largest outsourcing services agreements in Scandinavia this year. And for T-Systems to win this contract shows, that there is now a third alternative to the traditional IT vendors and the new offshore challengers in the Scandinavian market for strategic outsourcing. "The contract agreement with KONE is a further example of our expertise and success in cloud computing at the international level. It also highlights the attractiveness of our wide-ranging cloud portfolio," says Reinhard Clemens, Member of the Board of Management at Deutsche Telekom and CEO of T-Systems. "Our corporate customers appreciate our global, secure, high-availability cloud services, as well as our proven responsibility for delivering solutions and managing ICT processes."
About Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 132 million mobile customers, over 32 million fixed-network lines and 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2012). The Group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in some 50 countries and has 230,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenue of EUR 58.2 billion in the 2012 financial year - over half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2012). About T-Systems Drawing on a global infrastructure of data centers and networks, T-Systems operates information and communication technology (ICT) systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions. On this basis, Deutsche Telekom’s corporate customer arm provides integrated solutions for the networked future of business and society. Some 52,700 employees at T-Systems combine industry expertise with ICT innovations to add significant value to customers’ core business all over the world. The corporate customers unit generated revenue of around EUR 10 billion in the 2012 financial year. About KONE KONE is one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry. The company has been committed to understanding the needs of its customers for the past century, providing industry-leading elevators, escalators and automatic building doors as well as innovative solutions for modernization and maintenance. The company's objective is to offer the best People Flow® experience by developing and delivering solutions that enable people to move smoothly, safely, comfortably and without waiting in buildings in an increasingly urbanizing environment. In 2012, KONE had annual net sales of EUR 6.3 billion and around 40,000 employees. KONE class B shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd in Finland.