Just how bad is the Hitachi-EDS alliance for IBM and Amdahl? Behind EDS of course stands General Motors Corp, and it accounts for a few percentage points of IBM’s total US business, so that’s bad; observers estimate that EDS may account for as much as 16% of Amdahl’s business, so that’s worse – only AT&T […]
Just how bad is the Hitachi-EDS alliance for IBM and Amdahl? Behind EDS of course stands General Motors Corp, and it accounts for a few percentage points of IBM’s total US business, so that’s bad; observers estimate that EDS may account for as much as 16% of Amdahl’s business, so that’s worse – only AT&T contributes more, perhaps 22% or so; but IBM suffers double, because not only will it lose a lot of business that would have gone through EDS, it also now meets a competitor in one of its most cherished new fields for rampant growth, systems integration, who will have a price advantage that is expected to start at 20%, and will go even higher where the business has sufficient long-term potential to make it worth buying at the front end.