IBM announced today a multi-year agreement with Ameriprise Financial, Inc. in which IBM will continue to support the company's technology infrastructure with a clear focus on maintaining strong reliability and incorporating innovative new technologies.

Ameriprise Financial is a leading diversified financial services firm with $655 billion in assets under management and administration and top 10 positions of each of its core businesses of advisory, asset management, annuities and protection.

Delivered through IBM SmartCloud, IBM hosts Ameriprise PeopleSoft applications, managing both the application and infrastructure tiers for its human resource, financial management, supply chain, and customer relationship management functions. As a separate part of the agreement, IBM will ensure that the Ameriprise technology infrastructure keeps pace with evolving industry standards.

"We are focused on helping our clients achieve their goals while also providing our advisors with the tools and support to grow their practices," said Randy Kupper, chief information officer of Ameriprise Financial. "To that end, we have extended our relationship with IBM due to the world-class service experience and detailed knowledge they bring to our growing IT and business needs. We will work together to ensure all our constituents – clients, advisors, employees and shareholders – realize the full benefits of IBM's broad product and service suite."

"The new agreement further demonstrates IBM's commitment to deliver high value services to Ameriprise and its clients and advisors to meet current and future business needs," said Robert Zapfel, general manager, IBM Global Technology Services, North America. "We are partnering with Amerprise in our mutual focus on business outcomes by delivering industry-leading products and services including the IBM Cloud."

IBM has been working with Ameriprise since 2006, and helped the company integrate its various IT systems supporting a broad portfolio of financial products. The new agreement builds on an existing relationship and includes significant enhancements to each of the core parts of the company's technology infrastructure, including midrange, mainframe, storage and network.

Today's announcement with Ameriprise Financial is another example of how IBM teams with its clients to help them capitalize on new opportunities. By tightly weaving together business insights, and industry-leading software portfolio, world-class technology research and operations expertise, IBM is redefining what it means to design, deploy and deliver IT services on a global scale. As a result, IBM clients achieve faster return on investment while freeing up resources to focus on innovative projects.