The contract was part of the five-year, 1.3bn-euro ($1.9bn) agreement signed between EDS and ABN’s wholesale client operation in 2002. Under the deal, EDS provided application development and infrastructure management services to all the major countries in which the wholesale client business operated.
According to reports in the Australian press, these services will now be brought back in-house across ABN’s antipodean operations, with sources close to the deal quoted as saying that the decision was taken for operational reasons, rather than as a result of dissatisfaction with the services provided by EDS.
It is thought that the ABN technology workers who transferred to EDS when the contract began will return to the bank early in 2008 as the contract is wound down. The transition to in-house service provision is expected to take place over the first half of next year.
