The Web-based app, rolled out in late 1999, is a Microsoft Active Server Pages application hosted on a Windows NT server at EDS's Plano, Texas, data center, said Charley Kiser, EDS global director of service. The software displays performance metrics based both on systems performance and customer input. It is used to monitor 1,000 EDS contracts that account for more than 90 percent of total revenue. Dashboard reports reflect input from customers and EDS managers, as well as quantitative results collected from data centers, call centers and other EDS-managed facilities, Kiser said. At the same time Dashboard was designed, Milholland said, he made several other decisions that shaped the ongoing effort to modernize its systems.
All content is to support XML as well.
The company is also standardizing on back-office software from SAP wherever possible. EDS is now rolling out SAP's Financials and Time Reporting apps and considering others as well, including its CRM apps. Another online initiative underway in EDS's subsidiary, A.T. Kearney, aims to increase productivity and information sharing across the company by marrying Web search tools with collaboration software, said Joe Laurin, the Kearney principal who heads the knowledge management program. Laurin is currently tying together different databases that store information inputted by consultants and managers. That is not a simple effort, he said.