German incumbent Deutsche Telekom has signed a €400m deal with the government of Catalonia to supply IT and telecommunications systems, through the operator group’s subsidiary T-Systems. The aim of the deal is to reducing the number of ICT service providers the government uses from 200 at present to less than 20.

The government said that it also wants to establish a more streamlined, homogeneous infrastructure and be able to use services in response to demand, in order to reduce operating costs.

T-Systems will network the public administration sites and provide telecommunications services and the datacentre infrastructure for the government. In addition, it will be responsible for operating workstation computers and applications, and providing user support.

“The deal with Catalonia is one of the biggest deals we have won outside Germany so far,” said Reinhard Clemens, CEO of T-Systems.

Clemens also argued that the economic situation in Europe is creating a “favourable climate for big deals”.

“When longer-term contracts come up for renewal, more and more large enterprises are looking to move partly over to cloud computing. And in Europe we are among the top players in this area.”

At present, T-Systems in Spain has 1,200 employees across seven sites working exclusively on projects for the Catalan government.

Look out for the October issue of MCI, which addresses the enterprise market and includes an interview with the head of Orange Business Services and in-depth features on BYOD and datacentres.