IBM announced a five-year IT services agreement including cloud, mobile, analytics and security technologies with Columbia Pipeline Group. The deal is valued at $180 million, Inc. (NYSE: CPGX) supporting the company’s continued growth as an independent energy company.
On July 1, CPG completed the separation of its natural gas pipeline, midstream and storage business from energy infrastructure company NiSource Inc. As a stand-alone, publicly traded company, CPG is rapidly expanding its operations to serve new and existing customers and markets, with net asset investments expected to grow from about $4.6 billion in 2015 to about $13.5 billion by 2020.
The agreement calls for IBM to move CPG’s IT infrastructure and business applications — including human resources, billing and finance, pipeline operations and IT management — from NiSource’s data centers into a private cloud in an IBM data center in Columbus, Ohio. IBM also will separate CPG’s networks from NiSource and manage CPG’s integrated IT environment going forward. The solution includes the core data center and IBM Cloud infrastructure, network services, help desk, end user services, intelligent security platforms, mobile device management, and operational analytics.
