Microsoft Corp yesterday formalized its relationship with services giant Electronic Data Systems Ltd through a strategic alliance for global services. Microsoft president Steve Ballmer listed five areas the two firms were concentrating on initially, but said he expected a further expansion in the scope of the agreement in the future.

The five areas are networking and systems infrastructure, messaging and collaboration systems using Exchange, distributed systems management, Windows terminal server, and the global financial services industry. For the last, the two plan to offer systems for branch automation and credit unions based on Microsoft’s COM and COM+ based Windows Distributed interNet Applications architecture for Financial Services framework, called Windows DNAfs.

Microsoft has been working with EDS for at least twelve years, but the new agreement is a significant expansion according to Ballmer. EDS will now get early access to Microsoft technology and some free technical training under the new arrangement. In return, EDS says it will expand its Microsoft service offerings by training and certifying up to 7,000 Microsoft qualified consultants – the largest certification commitment to date from any company worldwide, it claims.

Earlier this year, Wang Global Services, a company in which Microsoft has an 8% stake, committed to building up a team of 2,500 certified consultants (CI No 3,613), and Amdahl Corp’s DMR Group also promised to build a 1,500 strong team. Last year, before its acquisition by Compaq Computer Corp, Digital Equipment Corp said it would have 3,000 certified engineers in place by the end of 1999. Unisys Corp has previously committed to 2,000 and NCR Corp to 1,000. Microsoft also has a services agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co.

Existing joint EDS-Microsoft customers include the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, BellSouth and San Francisco’s new Metreon Center. The two are also currently bidding for the 10-year, $1bn San Diego County contract as part of an eight company consortium. EDS, an early adopter of Microsoft Exchange, is currently moving its 100,000 internal workers over to Microsoft technology, and 74,000 Consistent Office Environment seats have been installed to date. The COE project uses Windows NT Server, Office, Internet Explorer and Exchange for global messaging and collaboration.