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Seeweekly news
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2005-11-14 |
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EDS Signs $500+ Million IT Services Contract With Royal Ahold, One of the Largest Global Retailers |
EDS (NYSE:EDS) today announced a five-year, approximately $500 million global information technology (IT) enterprise outsourcing agreement with Royal Ahold, the world's fourth-largest grocery retailer.
To support its strategic growth initiatives, EDS will provide Ahold with a flexible IT infrastructure and applications management services to transform and re-engineer its global operations, which include more than 4,000 supermarkets and retail outlets in Europe and the United States. This flexible IT strategy will provide the company with the agility to respond to market opportunities while EDS purchases, maintains and supports the needed hardware and software.
"Our competitive markets and strategic goals require us to focus our attention and resources on our core food retail business," said Anders Moberg, president and CEO for Ahold. "EDS worked with us to develop a global solution for our current geographic areas. The EDS team has demonstrated a commitment to a global integrated service delivery that will help us execute our business strategy."
As part of the arrangement, EDS will assume responsibility for the global retailer's IT infrastructure, which will include hosting Ahold's mainframe and midrange servers, providing local area network and voice network support. This will help reduce Ahold's total cost of ownership while allowing it to more effectively manage front- and back-office technology investments.
"This partnership between EDS and Ahold sets a standard for designing future IT outsourcing contracts in the global retail sector by focusing new capabilities and process modernization on the sector's business challenges," said Steve Schuckenbrock, EDS' Co-Chief Operating Officer and executive vice president of Global Sales & Client Solutions. "EDS presented Ahold with a clear technical solution that enables them to safely outsource their IT functions and focus on their core retail food business."
EDS Agility Alliance partners Cisco, EMC, Microsoft, Sun, among others, have jointly collaborated on the contract and will work together to deliver innovative IT and business solutions to Ahold.
This agreement also consolidates Ahold's helpdesk support. EDS will manage Ahold's computing workplace of more than 9,600 desktop and laptops, printers and e-mail users and provide help desk support for more than 10,000 users.
Additionally, approximately 450 Ahold employees located in the Netherlands and in the U.S. will transition to EDS.
Ahold's food retail operations in the United States comprise of Stop & Shop, Giant-Landover, Giant-Carlisle and Tops. Ahold's European retail operations include brand names such as Albert Heijn, Hypernova, Etos and Gall & Gall.
About Royal Ahold
Ahold (Euronext: AH) is the world's fourth largest food retailer and second largest foodservice operator. With over 200,000 employees, the company operates primarily in the United States and Europe under a number of leading local brand names. The company generated consolidated net sales in 2004 of approximately EUR 52 billion. |
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