EDS South Africa has announced that its Solution Centre has been awarded the status of Competitive Global Solution Centre by its parent, the global IT services giant. Twelve other solution centres across the worldwide EDS organisation have already been granted this status, including facilities in Ireland, the Czech Republic, South America and India.
For the South African economy, this potentially means the creation of new jobs in the high margin IT services sector.
"Creating these solution centres is all about reducing the cost of providing what our clients want," says Ian Bayne, currently managing EDS South Africa`s application development team.
"It is also part of EDS`s drive to leverage its global organisation for its clients` benefit, so that global resourcing can be optimised using a common framework."
According to Bayne, EDS has committed to funnel up to 30% of new megadeal business to its Competitive Global Solution Centre network.
"When you consider that EDS signed $31 billion-worth of business last year," he explains, "this represents an opportunity for the South African Solution Centre to pick up some significant international business in the future."
Bayne believes that the potential upside in terms of job creation could therefore be quite substantial, though it is not possible to be more specific yet. "We do expect to have to grow quite vigorously, and we will be using almost exclusively South African, mainly black, skills to achieve this."
As part of this programme, EDS South Africa will be undertaking extensive training to reach CMM Level 3 as soon as possible. CMM (Capability Maturity Model) accreditation is awarded by the Software Engineering Institute, and has become the industry standard for measuring the process maturity of software development organisations. Level 3 compliance requires that a standard, consistent process methodology be followed on all projects.
"Meeting CMM Level 3 compliance is enormously demanding," adds Bayne, "but it is essential to ensure world-class execution for our clients, particularly in the context of the global resourcing initiative represented by the Competitive Resourcing network. EDS has the in-house capabilities and structures to assist us to achieve this. We see this software certification as an important and concrete first step towards the ultimate goal of service excellence as implied in our Global Solution Management System (GSMS)."
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EDS, the leading global services company, provides strategy, implementation, business transformation and operational solutions for clients managing the business and technology complexities of the digital economy. EDS brings together the world`s best technologies to address critical client business imperatives. It helps clients eliminate boundaries, collaborate in new ways, establish their customers` trust and continuously seek improvement. EDS, with its management consulting subsidiary, AT Kearney, serves the world`s leading companies and governments in 60 countries. EDS reported revenues of $21.5 billion in 2001. The company`s stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EDS) and the London Stock Exchange. Learn more at eds.com.
CMM
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development centre sponsored by the US Department of Defense. The SEI`s core purpose is to help others make measured improvements in their software engineering capabilities, and CMM has become established as the measurement of process maturity in software development organisations, with the goal of improving performance and productivity. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is the chosen process improvement model for all EDS Global Solution Centres. The CMM is a five level model designed to help organisations identify and prioritise process improvement opportunities. Each higher level represents an increased ability to plan and control projects, software development activities, and organisation processes. Learn more at http://www.sei.cmu.edu.
GSMS
EDS`s Global Solutions Management System (GSMS) is a global process used to deliver the application engineering portfolio so that its clients get the best applications to solve their business problems. GSMS fully meets SEI CMM Level 2 and Level 3 requirements.
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