Sprint and IBM announced a five-year Information Technology (IT) agreement valued at more than $400 million. Under terms of the agreement, which expands the scope of existing IT work between the companies announced in September 2003, IBM Global Services will provide application development and maintenance support for selected Sprint IT software systems and will work with Sprint to:
- Establish accelerated software application delivery services to allow Sprint to more quickly deliver new and differentiated products to its customers while decreasing costs.
- Achieve Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3 certification, which is an industry-recognized standard set by Carnegie Mellon University for software application development and management. CMMI Level 3 certification demonstrates that Sprint incorporates the best IT business practices, ensuring predictability, lower costs and improved quality in performance.
As part of the agreement, approximately 1,000 Sprint IT employees will transfer to IBM to support Sprint applications.
