Over 1000 company-owned and franchised McDonald's restaurants in New Zealand, Australia and the South Pacific will be provided with service desk, on-site and remote support services from Unisys over the next five years, under a new contract.

The deal, which represents new business for Unisys, is worth $38.8 million.

Henry Shiner, McDonald's CIO for the Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific region, says reliable technology is critical to the customer experience.

"We chose Unisys because we need a partner who can leverage a delivery capability to provide field service support across a widespread geographic region,” Shiner says, "with the systems and rigorous processes to enable consistent, visible performance against agreed and flexible service levels.

Technology supported under the deal includes point of sale devices, back-office PC equipment, peripherals, wireless networks, customer order display units and cameras.

The central Unisys service desk will be located in Wellington, with business continuity failover based in Brisbane.