EDS Corp. has signed an agreement with airline booking giant Sabre Inc. to run its IT infrastructure the companies announced Thursday. Sabre has awarded EDS a 10-year, US$2.2 billion service contract, under which some 4,200 Sabre employees, mostly in the United States, will switch to EDS.
EDS will acquire Sabre’s airline infrastructure outsourcing business and internal IT infrastructure assets for $670 million. The companies will jointly market IT products and services to the travel and transportation industries, they said.
The agreement will enable Sabre to concentrate on its core areas of travel distribution, marketing services and software products; while it expands EDS’s position in the airline industry, which spends an estimated US$9 billion to 10 billion a year on IT. With the Sabre deal, EDS will gain high-profile clients like American Airlines Inc. and US Airways Inc. It already serves such companies as AeroM