Westpac extends Gen-i contract in NZ

Westpac’s New Zealand arm has extended its 7-year deal with outsourcer Gen-i in a new 2-year contract for data, voice, call centre, contract management, mobility and access services.

Gen-i said the contract extension was worth more than $NZ50 million ($A38.5 million), with a spokeswoman noting that it did not add any new services to the existing deal.

She said the new contract was to be managed by Westpac New Zealand, outside of a vendor management team that the Westpac Group recently established in Australia under its multi-sourcing strategy.

The contract extension also came in addition to Gen-i's 2011 contract to host Westpac New Zealand in its new data centre in Auckland.

The data centre is located in Telecom New Zealand's Mayoral Drive exchange with direct interconnections to the telco's network.

According to Gen-i, the facility exceeds Tier-3 requirements of 99.82 percent availability and features a highly seismic-rated building with environmental monitoring.

Gen-i's spokeswoman said the build was completed on time and on budget, early this year, and migration of Westpac's production systems from an existing IBM data centre was underway.

Westpac banks the New Zealand government and is one of four Australian-owned banks operating across the Tasman that together with Britain’s Lloyds TSB Group holds 85 percent of all the country’s banking assets.