Farewell, EDS

Hewlett-Packard erased one of the most storied names in the government and commercial markets this year when it dropped the EDS brand in favor of HP Enterprise Services, Washington Technology reported.

EDS, known originally as Electronic Data Systems, was one of the creators of the market for outsourced IT services, particularly data centers. The name survived for 47 years, including a stint of ownership by General Motors.

But there are a lot of reasons for the change, such as creating a single company culture and presenting a single face to the market.

Dropping the name EDS also signaled that integration of the acquisition was over. It's now time for the billions spent to start paying off.

And that's not going to be easy.

From Paul Boutin's article at VentureBeat, before the World Wide Web, working for Ross Perot’s IT outsourcing firm EDS was one of the most prized and prestigious jobs in tech. EDS, which Perot founded in 1962, defined the outsourcing business and made Perot a hero to both businessmen and techies.

Perot resigned in 1986, but his brash, I-always-win style continued as part of EDS’s professional brand. Perot ran for president as an independent candidate in 1992 and won over an impossible 39 percent of voters in polls, before dropping from the race.

Last year, HP acquired EDS and its 137,000 worldwide employees for $13.9 billion. Now, some of the acquired staffers have told NBC Bay Area reporter Randy McIlwain that HP has slashed salaries from 29 to 47 percent among the people from whom McIlwain got numbers. HP has made several rounds of cuts since the purchase.