IBM may be rowing hard to retain its lucrative Westpac outsourcing contract that notionally draws to an end this year.Westpac, oddly, did not mention its thinking regarding extension of this critical supply arrangement at an investor briefing promoted as addressing "IT & productivity".Bob McKinnon, group executive of technology at Westpac told the briefing that "the great progress that we have made has not been possible without strong support from our key suppliers, in particular, IBM which has really stepped up to the mark over the last 12 months."The context was the fall in the number of critical incidents each month that hinder customer access to the bank's services.These were once a day but are now fewer than twice a week.McKinnon said the bank "materially improved the management of our key strategic partnerships" over the last year.  "We have not made the best of these over several years and this needed to change.  We've particularly focused on our relationships with IBM, Telstra, Optus, Microsoft and Oracle, all of which have greatly improved."