The legacy integrator and outsourcing vendor announced the signing of 308 new e-commerce contracts in the first 90 days of the new year, representing nearly US$500 million in revenue.
Chris Carrington, president of the company's e.Solutions unit for the Americas, said those 308 deals represent a 76 percent gain over the comparable 1999 quarter. Moreover, Carrington said small and midsize clients, which include a number of dotcom startups, accounted for about as many transactions as did EDS' traditional Global 2000 enterprise customers.
Among those new dotcom customers is GroceryWorks.com, for which EDS is creating a "super portal" enabling business and trading partners to hook into the entire supply chain. GroceryWorks is headed by former EDS vice chairman Gary Fernandes.
Other dotcom clients include Realestate.com, for which EDS is doing Web hosting and applications development; and Clickwell.com, which hired EDS to design and build its nutritional supplement and personal wellness Web site.
Example: Clickwell launch
Carrington pointed to the Clickwell project as one example of the transformation at EDS. The integrator took only 13 weeks from the initial phone call to get Clickwell's site into production, he says.
EDS officials say the bulk of the growth in e-biz services came from the company's Digital Value Chain Services operation, which enables B2B and retail connections from the point of production to the point of consumption; and the Interactive Architects practice, which offers Web-development services.
Web hosting is also a fast-growing business, adds EDS, while the digital-strategy consulting business -- although not yet a major revenue contributor -- is expected to kick in to the top line eventually.
In related news, the e.Solutions unit formally announced the launch of an "E.Sales-E.Marketing" group, which aims to assist online-retail clients in improving their brand images, boosting sales and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Last year, EDS said about US$2 billion of its US$17 billion in total revenue derived from electronic commerce. However, much of that US$2 billion was in non-Internet areas like electronic data interchange.
