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Burlington Northern Santa Fe and IBM Global Services Aug. 14 announced a 10-year agreement, under which IBM beginning Sept. 1 would manage BNSF's mainframe, midrange and desktop computing environments, and operate the railroad's Topeka, Kan., and Fort Worth, Texas, data centers.


IBM, which also would manage BNSF's e-mail systems and most of its technical help-desk functions, plans to offer jobs to about 120 railroad employees whose work is covered by the agreement.


"This agreement provides not only real, on-going savings for BNSF but also creates further opportunities for the 500 technology services professionals that remain with BNSF in Fort Worth, Topeka and other locations," said Greg Fox, BNSF vice president, technology services and chief information officer, in a prepared statement.


The agreement would enable the railroad to access IBM’s center of transportation innovation in Boulder, Colo., and assemble a team of experts from BNSF, IBM Research and IBM’s transportation industry consulting arm to develop new transportation technology applications that could be used by the Class I or marketed to other companies to generate revenue.