In a potential outsourcing arrangement, IBM may acquire Lloyds Bank Group's data centers -- and then manage Lloyd's IT workloads within the data centers for an ongoing fee. Chatter about the potential arrangement surfaced on The Register today.
Updated March 13, 2017: The deal now essentially looks official, according to multiple reports.
Lloyds Banking Group, which has about 88,000 employees, is a major British financial institution formed through the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds TSB in 2009.
The potential IBM-Lloyds deal, if consummated, could be a blessing for two companies in need.
After all, IBM's IT consulting and outsourcing businesses models have faced constant pressure from public cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Although IBM's own cloud is gaining momentum, it hasn't grown quickly enough to offset falling hardware, software and IT services revenues at the company.
On the flip side, Lloyds Bank apparently suffered at least two major outages this week -- which left online customers unable to access their accounts. An outsourcing deal with IBM, featuring a tight SLA (service level agreement), could help Lloyds to turn the page on this week's setbacks.
ChannelE2E has not independently verified the potential IBM-Lloyds Bank discussions. IBM is expected to announce quarterly results on January 20, 2017.
Complete M&A Coverage: Track all VAR, MSP and CSP mergers and acquisitions by visiting the ChannelE2E Milestones section daily.
