Atos Origin, an international IT services company, today announced that it has signed a five-year contract with DZ Bank, an integral part of the German cooperative banking organisation. Atos Origin will take over management of the data center and infrastructure services to support the majority of the IT applications for DZ Bank.

DZ Bank provides access to the international financial markets for its partner institutions of 1,200 co-operative banks including Volks- and Raiffeisenbanken and their customers. The contract with Atos Origin includes server, storage and database management as well as backup and archiving services. Atos Origin will deliver these services from its data centers in Essen and Ratingen in Germany. The technical support for applications development and management will be delivered from Germany and the Atos Origin near-shore center in Poland.

“We are the central administration for all co-operative banks with 12,000 branches and our partners expect professional collaboration”, Alfred Leicht, Business Unit Manager IT von der DZ BANK. “We expect the same from our service providers in order to ensure that we provide an excellent service to our partners and their clients.”

“This contract further strengthens our strong position in financial services in Germany, where we provide our clients with both outsourcing and payment solutions,” said Winfried Holz, CEO Atos Origin Germany and CEMA.