London-based consumer products maker The Unilever Group is planning to turn over some of its IT infrastructure operations to Hewlett-Packard Co.

Unilever, which employs some 206,000 people worldwide, said yesterday that it has a memorandum of understanding with HP to outsource its data center operations, server and database management, and application hosting for operations in the Americas as well as in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and turkey. The outsourcing deal is contingent on a final agreement between the two companies, expected to be in place later this year.

In a statement, Unilever CIO Neil Cameron said, "This potential agreement would be a natural extension of our current relationship. The intention between both parties is to leverage HP's scale, expertise and industry leadership to ensure Unilever has access to world-class technology at substantially lower costs."

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Prashanth Rai