EDS scores BP mega-deal

Replaces 40 suppliers

EDS has scooped up a £300 million PC desktop outsourcing contract from BP, delivering a stunning blow to the oil vendor's current roster of 40 channel suppliers. Under the five-year contract, EDS will take over procurement of PCs for BP's 13,000 users in the UK. It will build a dedicated call centre in Durham to act as BP's dedicated IT support desk. Initially the BP contract is confined to the UK, but could be rolled out to the 142 countries in which BP operates. The support deal is also expected to be extended further to cover the business of Amoco, with which BP has announced a merger. BP UK currently has three separate PC suppliers and around 40 different IT suppliers. Under the five-year deal all PC purchasing will go through EDS. An EDS spokesperson stressed that its PC procurement would be vendor-independent, and said that EDS is not aligned with any particular PC manufacturer. In the UK, the company typically sub-contracts PC fulfilment - configuration, delivery and installation - to product resellers. Computacenter, EDS' partner in GCAT, the UK government's online IT procurement catalogue, is tipped as hot favourite to pick up the lion's share of the BP fulfilment business. EDS, which last year had sales of over £10 billion, has in the past been able to strike huge deals with PC vendors to supply large numbers of PCs across a number of its outsourcing contracts. EDS accounts for an estimated 8 per cent of the UK government's IT spend.