CMP Information, a publisher owned by United Business Media, has signed a multi-million dollar, five-year deal with Savvis to outsource IT resources and “support international business growth.”

 

CMPi says it publishes over 40 magazines including Music Week and Property Week and provides targeted media such as exhibitions, conferences and Web sites. The company says it has customers in over 120 countries across 20 vertical markets.

 

The deal with Savvis, a vendor of IT infrastructure services for business and government applications, is intended to improve the “reliability, scalability and redundancy of CMPi’s infrastructure and enable CMPi to channel its IT resources into more strategic IT projects to support business growth,” CMP officials say.

 

Projects include expanding its virtual conference and exhibition offering, CMP officials say, as well as “developing a digital strategy.”

 

Savvis will host CMPi’s “critical” IT infrastructure, including its e-mail, financial services, business intelligence and CRM systems and will provide managed hosting for several of CMPi’s websites on Savvis’ managed utility blade platform.

 

Savvis will also manage network connections between a number of CMPi’s global offices.

 

“For CMPi, IT is critical in supporting business growth, particularly as more of our business activity is focused online,” said Paul Way, digital development director at CMPi. “Effectively, the deal will enable our IT department to be more dedicated to mission critical projects.”

 

Earlier this month, industry observer Anastasia Tubanos reported that “the Web site of The Financial Times (News - Alert) encountered a bit of struggle after the theft of equipment at its third-party data center.”

 

The publisher said it was “unable to post new articles or update data on its site following the thefts, which took place at a Cable & Wireless (News - Alert) colocation facility in Watford, north of London,” Tubanos said. The FT.com site’s backup facilities are operated by Savvis, which took over the running of the site.

 

“It seems that initially there were rumors circulating the FT.com newsroom that servers had been stolen. However the company told ComputerWorld UK that other ‘equipment’ was taken instead, although what equipment specifically has been undisclosed,” Tubanos reported.