EDS Forms Alliance In Bid To Regain Services Momentum

Unveiled Monday, EDS said it would announce its partners in application, business process, and industry segments in coming months. "Creation of this alliance is a key element of EDS's multiyear plan to regain market leadership," said the firm's chairman and CEO Mike Jordan in a statement. "This alliance goes much deeper than joint contract pursuits. It extends from the research bench through the life of the business relationship with our clients."

EDS said it has already been working with its partners to develop its EDS Agile Enterprise Platform. The company noted that it has been working with Cisco to build out a secure global network and with EMC on information storage and other management solutions. Sun is working with EDS to create various hosting components via virtualization and utility computing solutions, while Xerox and EDS have been developing new approaches for document-management infrastructures.

EDS said a joint Agile Development Center with 1,000 technologists will be established in Plano, Texas, later to be replicated at various global locations. "The Agile Development Center," the firm stated, "is the industry's first collaborative service dedicated to the design development, testing, and delivery of a next-generation service-delivery platform."

The firm said each alliance partner will be represented in the EDS Global Sales organization with some of them being co-located with EDS solution teams.