EDS wins £15m outsourcing deal at Cheshire council

EDS has won a £15m outsourcing deal to manage the desktop infrastructure at Cheshire County Council.

The seven-year contract covers the procurement, maintenance, support and disposal services for 5,000 PCs at the council.

EDS already has an existing broadband network contract with Cheshire but the council said the desktop outsourcing was a completely separate deal that went out to competition. EDS won from a shortlist of four.

Stephen Hopson, county ICT officer at Cheshire County Council, told silicon.com the contract covers improvements in service and an overall reduction in costs, which will be benchmarked against national levels.

"Part of the arrangement is to help us move from supplier contract to a managed service and help us identify where we can make efficiencies," he said.

The deal is a big win for EDS' newly launched Global Field Services division of its IT services business, which focuses on mid-sized customers in both the public and private sector.

Hopson said the decision to outsource is part of the council's wider strategy of rationalising its IT infrastructure and the number of suppliers used in order to improve efficiency and that servers are next up for review.

"We want to look at consolidating our server farm and maybe look at going to grid computing in the medium term over the next couple of years," he said.