Hewlett-Packard announced this week it will acquire IT services giant EDS for about $13.9 billion, and the deal should have multiple implications for the telecom market. HP already is a major supplier of OSS and service delivery systems, as well as network signaling via its widely-deployed OpenCall SS7 platform. In recent months, the company has made some decisive moves in telecom, including a turn away from the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) and commitment to use its own blade technology as an ATCA alternative. HP is only a couple of years removed from poor financial performance and a corporate spying scandal, and EDS has never quite been able to match the success of IBM in the global IT services market; but telecom service providers around the world embraces IT services, managed services and unified communications for corporate enterprise customer. The HP-EDS combo will present them with a strong potential partner than either company would have on its own.
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- see this follow-up at Light Reading Europe