Mark Gilbert’s Blog

HP is poised to buy BT’s data centres off them in a deal reportedly worth £1.5 Billion. This deal would see BT offload it’ 40 data centres to HP according to the Sunday Times. BT would still have access to the centres under a 10 year deal which would also see BT’s management of HP’s voice and data networks extend worldwide.

The companies already have an outsourcing deal worth $1.5 Billion that was forged in 2004, including worker swaps. Now the ties between the two companies are getting tighter this will bring increased speculation of a merger of the pair. Obviously both companies are playing down this prospect the Sunday Times reports.

BT were unable to comment on the possible tie-up, but HP have said

If there are developments relating to the alliance between British Telecom and HP we will inform you through our usual channels.

Both companies will announce their latest financial results this Thursday, with BT’s announcement being the last for departing CEO Ben Verwaayen. Obvious benefits of an announcement being made now is that Verwaayen could leave the companies shareholders with a large pile of cash, courtesy of HP while making BT’s new developed services division more robust and profitable while HP on the other hand would be able to tout the massive deal to their shareholders.

As said previously both companies are playing the rumour down, but then they would, wouldn’t they?

Cheers

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 20:03 and is filed under Hardware, Internet, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.