REDMOND, Wash., July 21, 1999 — Today Microsoft and EDS solidified what has been a mutually successful, longstanding working relationship by announcing a strategic alliance that will benefit enterprise customers worldwide. The goal of this alliance is to provide the companies’ mutual clients with efficient and cost-effective end-to-end information technology solutions that will enable them to improve performance and meet business goals by integrating the global service capabilities of EDS with Microsoft’s enterprise platform.
Microsoft’s enterprise platform is a comprehensive, integrated set of products and technologies that enable organizations to develop secure, reliable and manageable solutions for running their business. EDS will apply its life-cycle services to design, deploy, manage and support Microsoft-based server and desktop infrastructure solutions, particularly in Europe and North America.
“With this alliance between ourselves and Microsoft, we will be in a position of strength to create solutions that benefit both EDS and Microsoft customers around the world,” said EDS Australia Executive Director, Joe Cothran. “We already see this collaboration working well with our large Australian financial services client, the Commonwealth Bank.”
In October 1997, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia agreed to a contract with global technology giant EDS to outsource its information technology (IT) services. This was the world’s largest outsourcing contract ever undertaken in the financial services industry. Commonwealth Bank of Australia serves over 7.5 million customers through more than 90,000 points of representation and is Australia’s foremost provider of banking and financial services in Australia. Its services include retail, business and investment banking, insurance, brokering services and funds management.
The Bank’s senior management realized the importance of outsourcing the organization’s IT operations in order to establish a stronger focus on core business activities. Through outsourcing its IT operations, the Bank was able to reduce operating costs, improve career prospects for IT staff, and capitalize on the joint intellectual property of EDS and Microsoft, due to a recently announced alliance between those two companies.
In December 1998, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced a three-year multimillion-dollar enterprise licensing agreement with Microsoft, the largest of its type in Australia. Spanning the Bank’s significant national and International network of approximately 24,000 personal computers and more than 2,000 servers, the agreement provides the Bank the right to run the most current Microsoft products, including Microsoft Exchange Server, SNA Server and SQL Server, as well as the right to run any future versions of these products. In addition, it provides the Bank and EDS with direct access to Microsoft executives, enterprise consultants and intellectual property to best exploit new and emerging Microsoft technologies.
The new global agreement between EDS and Microsoft will better develop technical skill sets around the Microsoft platform. To be best prepared to serve its customers, EDS has standardized internally on Microsoft’s enterprise platform with 74,000 Consistent Office Environment (COE) seats deployed across the company worldwide. This standardization covers the use of Windows NT Server and Windows NT Workstation, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Exchange Server for global messaging and collaboration.
Of particular benefit to the Commonwealth Bank is the focus on the Microsoft enterprise platform, with immediate emphasis on the teller networks, Windows NT Server migration, Windows NT Server, Terminal Server Edition, electronic messaging, e-commerce and distributed systems management.
With this newly announced alliance between EDS and Microsoft, the Bank will increase the benefits it is enjoying from its current arrangement. In particular the partners will have an opportunity to work closely together on joint initiatives of mutual value including new product development and solution offerings to their customers.
Even further, it helps accelerate the team’s efforts to enhance and use the digital nervous system within the Bank to transform three major business areas: relationships with customers and business partners; information flow and relationships between employees (knowledge management); and internal business processes.
“We recognize the critical importance of being able to access core technologies at an early stage,” Cothran said. “This will enable us to better build and more quickly deploy services, architecture and methodologies at the Bank, which are based on the Microsoft platforms where appropriate.”
The alliance between Microsoft and EDS builds upon a 12-year relationship between the two organizations. “This alliance with EDS extends our reach into the enterprise space,” said Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft. “Our partnership will strengthen Microsoft’s enterprise platform with EDS’ unsurpassed global services capability, strong client list, and most of all, a workforce that’s built a legacy of leadership in the business. Together the companies are committed to helping enterprise customers achieve dramatic business value from their technology investments and make for a great combination.”
