ABSA Bank said on Monday it will form a joint venture with local information technology firm Advanced Software Technologies in the desktop outsourcing market. “Based on a five year contract with Absa of between R350-million and R400-million per annum, the new company will have an annual annuity revenue that is expected to grow from an initial R500-million to well over R1-billion within two years,” the companies said in a joint statement. The new company will service own IT infrastructure, which consists of 30000 PCs, servers and notebooks, 1500 local area networks, as well as AST-A’s existing regional clients.