Smiths Group expects savings of 25m from agreement with ATT

SMITHS Group plc, the global technology business, today announced that it has selected AT&T as its world-wide communications provider. The five year agreement reflects Smiths ongoing business transformation programme and will help Smiths to leverage its global scale, delivering improved productivity and cost reductions across the group’s five business divisions. Smiths expects to achieve annual savings of at least of at least $5 million on its IT and related communications costs.

AT&T will provide connectivity to approximately 400 Smiths locations in 50 countries as well as support advanced communications services and applications to 22,000 Smiths employees worldwide. Services from AT&T will include mobility, managed security, hosting, video conferencing, consulting, voice services and remote access for traveling users.

Information technology (IT) and advanced communications services play a critical role in the ongoing business transformation for Smiths Group..

As a result of this relationship, Smiths is moving to a consistent and global IT policy, enabling the Group to improve efficiency, leverage economies of scale, avoid duplication and improve purchasing and supplier management. AT&T is a key enabler for this new strategy, by being able to provide Smiths with one consistent global platform and network architecture, a standard portfolio of products and services and centralised global account management. The company expects to benefit from higher bandwidth and the elimination of single points of failure. A standardised and holistic approach to network management will simplify administration and improve service support.

Brian Jones, group CIO for Smiths Group welcomed today’s announcement. “Creating a seamless, agile and fit-for-purpose technology platform is critical to the on-going transformation of Smiths. AT&T brings to us the ability to accelerate the changes we need on a global basis and is providing the solid foundation to underpin the optimisation of our internal infrastructure. We expect to be able to better serve our customers and deliver increased value to shareholders through this relationship.”

Ron Spears, group president, AT&T Global Business Services, said, “This agreement is another example of how AT&T is helping the worlds leading enterprises harness leading edge communications technology to bring business velocity to their operations everywhere they operate around the world.”

All Smiths business units and operations will have access to AT&T global IP infrastructure as well as the company’s world leading business productivity tools and applications. The company is already seeing immediate benefits from the agreement with AT&T.

• Smiths is leveraging AT&T’s leadership in mobility services with the deployment of a pilot programme for corporate Blackberry users 
• 2,000 Smiths employees have been licensed to access to AT&T Connect, AT&T’s leading unified communications platform, allowing real time collaboration, audio, video and IP based conferencing from individual desktops.

Migrating Smiths Group on to the AT&T network is now underway and is expected to be completed by January 2009.

About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates, AT&T operating companies, are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. Among their offerings are the world's most advanced IP-based business communications services and the nation's leading wireless, high speed Internet access and voice services. In domestic markets, AT&T is known for the directory publishing and advertising sales leadership of its Yellow Pages and YELLOWPAGES.COM organizations, and the AT&T brand is licensed to innovators in such fields as communications equipment. As part of its three-screen integration strategy, AT&T is expanding its TV entertainment offerings. In 2008, AT&T again ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine’s World’s Most Admired Telecommunications Company list and No. 1 on America’s Most Admired Telecommunications Company list. Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com.

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