R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, an indirect subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., is the latest addition to a growing list of consumer goods companies, which are outsourcing non-core operations to third party providers in order to strengthen leadership in their respective industries.The second-largest tobacco company in the United States recently signed a new services contract under which EDS will manage the company's information technology (IT) infrastructure environment. The contract was signed in the fourth quarter of 2007 and financial terms of the agreement are not being disclosed. "EDS has a strong foundation of proven tools, processes and people. This partnership will enable us to leverage speed, flexibility and effectiveness in technology to support our business growth strategies in the tobacco marketplace," says Donald I. Lamonds, executive vice president and CIO of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. "This will give us a strong platform to support our systems and applications, such as SAP."
Beginning in August 2008, EDS will manage R.J. Reynolds' IT infrastructure environment, including mainframes, mid-range servers, databases and data centers all housed at R.J. Reynolds' facilities in North Carolina. EDS will also provide field-level and help desk support for the R.J. Reynolds network and computing environment, which includes WAN/LAN, video conferencing, telephones, PCs and laptops for its employees nationwide.
