EDS

From Wikicompany

EDS (or Electronic Data Systems) is a global IT services company based in the US.

In 2004, EDS employed about 117,000 people located in 60 countries, and reported revenues of US$20.7 billion. EDS is ranked as one of the largest 100 companies on the FORTUNE 500 list.

Financials

For the 2004 year, 56% of revenue came from the Americas (Canada, Latin America, and the United States); 27% from Europe, Middle East, and Africa; 5% from Asia-Pacific; 4% from A.T. Kearney (EDS' management consulting subsidiary); and 8% from "other", such as currency exchange, asset sales, etc.

The services' revenue was: Infrastructure 52%, Applications software 24%, Business process outsourcing 12%, A.T. Kearney (management consulting) 4%, and other 8%.

Services

EDS catalogs its services into four service portfolio's:

• Infrastructure (ITO)
• Applications
• Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
• A.T. Kearney - Management consulting company

Infrastructure services means operating part or all of a client's computer and communications infrastructure, such as networks, mainframes, "midrange" and Web servers, desktops/laptops, and printers.

Applications services means developing, integrating, and/or maintaining applications software for clients.

Business process outsourcing means performing a business function for a client, like payroll, call centers, insurance claims processing, and so forth.

A.T. Kearney is a management consulting firm that operates as a fairly independent subsidiary of EDS. Kearney provides strategy, organization, operations, and technology advice to businesses.

Customers

Most of EDS' clients are very large companies that need services from a company of EDS' scale. EDS' largest client is General Motors, which accounts for 9.7% of EDS' revenue. Since GM has plants in 32 countries, EDS is one of a few IT services companies that can handle that kind of a client.

The current contract between General Motors and EDS expires in July of 2006. GM has said that they intend to contract with a variety of vendors, spreading more of the work to vendors beyond EDS. For EDS, this will likely continue the steady decline of GM revenue. GM's IT spend has been declining for many years.

Another large EDS client is the U.S. Navy. In 2000, they won a contract for the creation of a US$9 billion intranet linking the US Navy and the Marine Corps. This initiative is known as the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI).

In 2004, NMCI accounted for about 4% of EDS' revenue. NMCI has been called the largest private network in the world, with approximately 400,000 "seats". EDS is providing the network, desktops, laptops, servers, telephones, video-conferencing, satellite transceivers, and overall management of the intranet.

Following on to the NMCI type of services, EDS in March 2005 won a US$4 billion contract with the U.K. Ministry of Defense to "consolidate numerous existing information networks into a single next-generation infrastructure.... The network will provide seamless interaction between headquarters, battlefield support and the front line, linking about 150,000 desktop terminals and 340,000 users in approximately 2,000 locations...."

Other major clients include American Airlines, Bank of America, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mass., Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Freddie Mac, J.Crew, Nextel, Phoenix Life, Primedia, Rolls-Royce, Sabre Holdings, ThyssenKrupp Budd, Telecom New Zealand, Telefonica (Brazil), USPS, and Xerox.

Strategy

In 2004 EDS began promoting its Agile Enterprise architecture, which it has developed with partners in the EDS Agility Alliance. Members include Cisco, Dell, EMC, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Siebel, Sun Microsystems, and Xerox.

The architecture is intended to help clients move from a legacy of 40 years of patchwork systems development to a modern architecture, which EDS claims will be both cheaper to operate and more adaptable to business change.

Locations

EDS operates in 60 counties.

In the US, EDS' largest locations are in the metropolitan areas of Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; and Northern Virginia. There are hundreds of sites throughout the US, including Central Kentucky, Montana, Iowa, Alabama, and many others.

In the UK, large sites are in London, Newcastle, Milton Keynes, Hook and Blackpool.

In Canada, major offices are in Ottawa, Oshawa, Toronto, and Calgary.

Brazil, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand also have major facilities.

EDS' Plano, Texas, campus is located about 20 miles (30 km) north of downtown Dallas. The campus consists of 3,521,000 square feet (327,000 m²) of office and data center space on 270 acres (1.1 km²) of land. It is the center of the 2,665 acre (11 km²) Legacy in Plano real estate development, which EDS built.

History

The company was established in 1962 by Ross Perot.

General Motors acquired the company in 1984.

EDS became an independent company again in 1996.

Recent negative press in UK

In recent years, the press (mostly in the UK) has published a growing number of stories about high profile government IT failures involving EDS:

• Child Support Agency (CSA)
• Department of Work and Pensions
• NHS Email System
• Electronic Benefits Transfer System
• Colorado Benefits Management System
• Another week, another EDS Government IT catastrophe…
• EDS investigated 4 times in 3 years