O2 looks after the pennies in IBM/Ericsson outsource plan

Mobile operator O2 Ireland has announced that they will outsource their IT division to IBM. IBM beat several other suppliers including Nokia, Accenture and Fujitsu in the bid to oversee O2’s IT division.

The move will see the outsourcing of nearly five hundred O2 Ireland staff members in a two phase outsource plan. The first half will see the 230 member staff of the O2 IT department transfer to IBM in the first and second quarter of 2008.

The mobile phone operator made a statement this morning which said the outsource follows an announcement made earlier in the year in which O2 said they were planning on outsourcing their IT and Network Management divisions later on in the year.

O2 Ireland is currently in talks with Sony Ericsson with regard to its Network Management department and it is rumoured that they will outsource a further 220 staff members to Ericsson later on in 2008 bringing the number up to 450 employees and leaving O2 Ireland’s employee headcount at just 1,200.

Early in the year the company sought 100 redundancies and while those affected received generous redundancy packages it is understood that those affected by next years move might not be so lucky.