IBM and Caja de Ahorros y Pensiones de Barcelona, "la Caixa" announced Dec. 29 that the two companies have formed a 10-year strategic services relationship for IBM to manage the more than two million euro infrastructure technology budget of la Caixa. As part of the agreement, IBM through Serveis Informatics la Caixa, S.A. (Silk) will provide technology, operations, applications and infrastructure services to "la Caixa" and will manage its data processing centers, located in Cerdanyola del Valles and San Cugat (Barcelona). The agreement is expected to save la Caixa 400 million euros over the 10-year period. The contract will provide "la Caixa" with access to new technologies and innovations to enhance its business development both in Spain and global markets and to position the bank as one of the leaders in utilizing new technologies in the financial sector such as mobility, social media and cloud computing. The relationship also includes collaboration between the "la Caixa" Innovation Center in Barcelona and IBM´s research centers. The objective of the Center is to develop new innovations to enhance "la Caixa"'s business by providing the latest technologies, research capabilities and innovations in business processes for smarter banking, mobility, social media and cloud computing. (IBM, 914-499-1900 , http://www.ibm.com; Caja de Ahorros y Pensiones de Barcelona "la Caixa",+34 93 404 65 06 , http://www.lacaixa.com.)

Everset Group, in its recently released 2012 Market Predictions report, has predicted that banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) will continue to be the prime outsourcing customer segment for technologies like cloud computing in 2012. Verticals such as healthcare and MDR (manufacturing, distribution and retail) also are forecast to gain strength. “While the economy in the United States is still in recovery mode, demand from European markets will likely remain sluggish due to uncertainties surrounding monetary and fiscal policy actions as well as sovereign debt risk,” the research firm said. The firm predicted that economic and political factors will keep the outsourcing demand low in the early part of 2012, forcing providers to develop new delivery models to attract business. However, it predicts business confidence will rise towards the end of 2012. The full report is available at research.everestgrp.com. (Everest Group,214-451-3000, http://www.everestgrp.com.)

Red Hat, Inc. recently announced that Daiwa Next Bank, Tokyo-based Daiwa Securities Group’s internet bank, has selected them to construct its internal cloud called “Daiwa Cloud”.  Daiwa Cloud is designed to be a common platform across the Daiwa Securities Group and was constructed using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Daiwa Securities Group began using Red Hat Enterprise Linux gradually in 2004. Daiwa Next Bank has also migrated to the Enterprise Linux as its enterprise operating system for its core banking system. Daiwa’s migration to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system from their previous UNIX system has reduced the internet bank’s technology costs by 50 percent. Koichi Suzuki, senior executive managing director at Daiwa, said, “I think open source is the future and is most definitely the mainstream in cloud computing.” (Red Hat Inc.,919-754-3700, www.redhat.com.)

NexJ Systems Inc., a provider of next-generation enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, Jan. 4 announced an agreement with Winfund, a vendor of Wealth Management solutions for mutual fund and insurance distributors in Canada, for Winfund to integrate a select set of NexJ’s CRM solutions into its W.connect and W.insurance offerings. Winfund customers will have the option of a private cloud solution hosted off-site or on-premise provided on a subscription basis. Laird Elliott, president and CEO of Winfund, said, “We believe this provides us with significant strategic advantage in new business opportunities and further provides our existing W.connect and W.insurance customers the ability to leverage additional functionality with their current deployment.”

(NexJ Systems Inc.,416-222-5611, www.nexj.com; Winfund,613-526-1969      , http://www.winfund.com.)