The outsourcing deal with Paris-based Equant, a unit of France Telecom, will allow UMG to focus its IT resources on recording-industry IT applications instead of networking needs, said Scott Belmont, executive vice president and CIO of UMG in New York.

'From a music standpoint, our market is evolving rapidly, and it's enough to keep up with that technology,' Belmont said in an interview last week. 'At the same time, we felt we needed to hand over the network needs to somebody who does that for a living.'

A big advantage of working with Equant is that the outsourcer can handle big spikes in network traffic, meaning UMG would not have to build its network to handle the largest spikes in traffic, which would be a costly prospect, Belmont said. 'It's like getting one seat on the bus, versus paying for the whole cost of the bus,' he said.

The deal, signed March 1, will cost UMG in the 'tens of millions of dollars' per year, he said, adding that the company still expects to save money.

The contract gives Equant responsibility for all of UMG's communications infrastructure, including a global WAN and LAN, managed voice and IP telephony, and Web hosting, Equant said.