London, 30 October, 2009 - Fujitsu has been awarded preferred bidder status by The Highland Council for a new Information Communication and Technology (ICT) services contract of five years (with an option to extend for a further two years). Under the new £66m contract Fujitsu will manage the entire ICT estate for The Highland Council, including additional scope for curriculum ICT to all schools across the Highlands.

This new partnership will invest in a complete transformation and modernisation of the Council's entire ICT infrastructure, systems and services, including major projects for new customer relationship management and the provision of unified communications solutions across the Council. This transformation programme will support and enable improvements in Council services and better flexible and mobile working. The new ICT systems and infrastructure will also be very energy-efficient resulting in major energy cost savings, a lower carbon footprint, and even higher ICT service levels for the Council and its ICT users. In addition the new contract will achieve annual efficiency savings for The Highland Council of 2.5% per annum.

Councillor Carolyn Wilson, chairman of The Highland Council Resources Committee, said: "This new contract will offer the Council and all the staff a number of interesting opportunities for new, improved and flexible ways of working in the future and allow significant investment in new ICT systems and infrastructure for both corporate and school curriculum ICT.

"It will deliver significant efficiency savings - £6.76 million over the next five years - and cut the carbon footprint of the Council through reduced carbon emissions and energy consumption."

Eithne Wallis CB, managing director, UK Government Business, Fujitsu comments: "Being awarded preferred bidder status for this contract is testament to the excellent work the team delivered over the past year on this public procurement. Our true desire to want to make a difference for the people working and living in the Highlands helped us get to the point we are at. We are all thoroughly looking forward to the next five years and the opportunities, including sustaining and growing local employment and local skills development, and through our commitment to a major community benefits programme with the Council."

Fujitsu has developed an innovative solution for the Council that will deliver more reliable and scalable infrastructure services, applications portfolio management, thick and thin client desktop technology based on Windows 7, a modern telephony solution based on Cisco IPT and an improved service management environment based on Fujitsu's TRIOLE for Services platform and Sense & Respond methodology.