HP has announced it is to kill off the EDS brand name, a year after its £7bn acquisition of the IT services giant.
As a division of HP, the organisation will now be known as HP Enterprise Services, ending a brand that has been synonymous with outsourcing since EDS was founded in 1962.
The announcement states that the change will take place “where permitted by local country law”, and it is not yet clear how soon the change will be effective in the UK. The HP Press Office was unsure of the situation, although the former EDS UK website at www.eds.co.uk now redirects to a UK page for HP Enterprise Services detailing the company’s country credentials.
“I see this as the next chapter in a long and distinguished history of IT services,” said senior the vice president (unable to name due to legal reasons) and general manager of HP Enterprise Services.
EDS’s European general manager Bill Thomas, a former head of EDS UK, announced earlier this month that he would be leaving the company on 31 October, to be succeeded by Mike Nefkens, who is currently EDS vice president responsible for its dealings with General Motors (GM). EDS was at one time a GM subsidiary.
No doubt HP will be hoping the change of name will attempt to mask the massive failings of EDS on UK government contracts.
EDS lost out on the large identity cards programme, as well as losing its contract for NHS email following a dispute between the two parties. It has also been synonymous with some other troubled government programmes, including the delayed Ministry of Defence DII project, the National Offender Management System (C-Nomis), and the failed tax credits system.
EDS is still embroiled in £709 million suit from broadcaster BSkyB, over a troubled customer relationship management system rollout.
HP and EDS have been cutting jobs extensively since the acquisition. And executives have also left the company: most notably in May, EDS UK boss Sean Finnan moved to rival IBM Global Services.
17 comments:
They can try changing their name but the management is the same so they'll be offering the same old crap no doubt. Not sure how their staff will take this news??
As an EDSer we can say we are pretty ambivolent. Hurd and his HP printer ink monkeys haven't got a clue.
Aside from being obsessed with ripping off staff wages generating HP pull demands are alienting every customer we have with pressure for HP refresh of kit not being welcolmed.
EDS may have a poor rep, name me an Outsourcer that is honestly any better, but HP are going to destroy us and themselves at this rate.
That podcast is a shocker (top right hand corner of page). How the hell can the company be put in the hands of idiots like that??? He sounds like he's giving an address from a foreign planet. Is he out of touch with life? Bizzare behavior!!
If HP thinks it can cover the track of incompetence left by the disasterous EDS then they can think again. Governments are only too aware that nothing has changed apart from the name.
Rather than incorporating EDS into HP, HP would have been better washing their hands of EDS full stop. HP now run the risk of being tarred with the same brush as the hapless EDS. Hurd may live to regret this.
More job losses at EDS while management pick up huge pay packets. What is the government doing about this lot?
HP may have killed off EDS but there is little doubt their reputation for screw ups will linger on.
As a HP shareholder I am pretty disgusted by Mark Hurd's handling of this whole affair. He has spent $13.9Billion of our money on EDS and this looks like one of the worst decisions he could have made. Yet somehow he still manages to collect these ridiculous bonuses for what is tantamount to failure. He must go.
Oh and he should be made to pay all his bonuses back. He has quite clearly performed some kind of fudge by investing in EDS while EDS still had UK Government contracts running (for his bonuses to be paid). What happens in a couple of years time when EDS (HP Enterprise Services) have lost their contracts??? Yep, Hurd will be on his way, but not before he has banked all his money. He should be forced to pay it back now!
To HP Shareholder....
The fudge is that Hurd is accumulating companies like EDS and reassigning their profits as HP profits, thereby giving the impression that HP continues to prosper and grow
Look undre the hood and witness teh divisional breakdown. The truth is that HP is stagnating and without EDS he would have been exposed as the CEO of a company that no longer invents or leads. It is less profitable than it was when he took over. Hurd is obsessedby IBM and HP now follows IBM's model slavishly. It survives purely on an acquire, slash and burn ideology.
He's offshored jobs, picked the US, Canadian & Peurto Rican staff's pockets, let it be known via minions like Mattes & Thomas that he isn't happy that UK, German, French & ANZAC staff told him to "Fuck Off" on that one and will continue to hammer us all simply to line his immediate clique's pockets.
He's hit pay and allowances so pensions will no doubt be next.
Hurd is fooling the stock markets for now. It will be a happy day when he goes
I am in full agreement with the posts on here. The way EDS/HP has treated it's staff is nothing short of appalling. In my eyes the only course of action to be taken should be for the UK Government to take all contracts off them and stop buying HP products. Then, this company (and it's underhand agents) may eventually see the error of it's ways.
Does anyone at HP know what they're doing exactly?
They know exactly what they are doing
Yeah, shafting staff so that board members get their hideous bonuses.
Is it just me that is puzzled as to how Gordon Brown can continue to allow (and to pay) this company to operate within government contracts on this performance??
As a former EDSer who opted out of the company after becoming disillusioned with life in the company I am not surprised at the recent soap opera that continues to plague HP.
The company has pretty much anger all its staff with some ridiculous demands and continuous cuts making staff trying to do a decent job to find it impossible to do it justice. But then be asked to take pay cuts whilst that tw*t Mr Turd gives himself a nice whopping bonus, some 38 times higher than his Dell counter part!
What a pr*ck.
Bollocks to HP, bollocks to the UK Government they all deserve each other.
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