Who is EDS?
EDS (NYSE:EDS), Electronic Data System, the IT service company founded by legendary Texan Ross Perot with $1,000, at once time was No. 2 US IT service provider (second to IBM). Today HP (NYSE:HPQ) announced buying EDS for $13.9 billion.
Among many things, EDS was famous for its hiring of former Navy/Marine, their tough work ethic, and its college graduate “system engineer” training program. Its current vice chairman Jeff Heller (former COO) was a graduate of that program. Interestingly, EDS was also my former employer: the company I worked for was a subsidiary of EDS for a few years.
Business wise, EDS has many goverment contracts (started from Medicare), from US federal and state goverment, to UK and other European countries. Industry wise, EDS was once the IT subsidiray of General Motor (bought by GM in 1984), before its spinoff from GM on 1996.
(From left, Ross Perot, Jeff Heller, another guy I don’t know…)
What happened to EDS in recent years?
1) Internally: Navy contract delay and cost over-run
2) Externally: competitive pressure from Indian IT companies
Compared to IBM, EDS is late to build up facilities in India.