EDS

By CIO New Zealand staff | Monday, January 11 2010

HP still trails IBM in the services market, but the company’s confidence in its own brand in part drove the decision to drop the EDS brand, analysts say, according to Network World.

Global HQ: Plano, Texas, US
Website: www.eds.com
Global leader: Joe Eazor, senior vice president and general manager, HP
Enterprise Services
Local leader: Gavin Greaves, country manager NZ
Core activity: Infrastructure technology outsourcing, applications services and business process outsourcing services
Revenue: US$5.2 billion (FY07-08 ended October 31)
Key customers: New Zealand and Australian government agencies, Kraft Foods, American Express
Employees: 100,000

A year after Hewlett-Packard paid US$13.9 billion to acquire Electronic Data Systems, it has decided to rebadge the organisation as HP Enterprise Services. The new group will include servers, storage, software, networking
and technology services.

HP executives say the brand shift reflects HP’s technology strength going forward. “We are combining the strong services brand equity that EDS has built over the past 47 years with HP’s technology leadership to become the
leading IT services provider,” says Joe Eazor, senior vice president and general manager of HP Enterprise Services. HP still trails IBM in the services market, but the company’s confidence in its own brand in part drove
the decision to drop the EDS brand, analysts say, according to Network World.

“This is a fairly significant bet for HP. They are continuing the integration plan to bring EDS into the HP culture, but also taking a bet that the HP brand will be better at bringing in business than the legacy EDS name,” says
Mark Mayo, president of global resources management at TPI, a global outsourcing industry research firm. “HP is betting this will be a positive move, and it’s too hard to tell yet if it is a brilliant or a bad move to leave the EDS brand behind.” Rachael Bolton and Denise Dubie, Network World