Grocery Chain Hires EDS For $500 Million Outsourcing DealGrocery Chain Hires EDS For $500 Million Outsourcing Deal

Electronic Data Systems has won a $500 million contract to provide a range of IT services for the world's fourth largest grocer, the outsourcer said Monday.

Under a five-year deal with Amsterdam-based Royal Ahold, EDS will manage the grocer's mainframe and midrange servers, support its local area networks and its voice systems, and provide a host of application development services. EDS will also manage roughly 10,000 desktop and laptop computers for Royal Ahold, which operates more than 4,000 supermarkets and retail outlets across the U.S. and Europe, including Stop & Shop and Tops.

As part of the contract, about 450 Royal Ahold IT workers will transfer to EDS. To help implement the deal, EDS says it will tap industry partners Microsoft, Sun, EMC and Cisco. Those vendors are part of what EDS calls its Agility Alliance network.

EDS formed the network last year in an effort to standardize the IT systems it deploys on behalf of customers to reduce cost and complexity. The plan also aims to keep hardware vendors that also play in the IT services business—specifically IBM and HP—out of EDS's top accounts.