Perot seemingly ushered in the era of outsourcing. He started serving various insurance providers/processing of medicaid/medicare. Later, EDS worked with airlines and ATM providers in a similar capacity. Value proposition was simple - leverage big iron......
The big change occurred in mid-80’s when General Motors acquired them as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Huge revenues accrued to EDS from GM. The former, not being a party to any UAW profit-sharing agreements, also turned in big profits to the parent. Dramatic head count increases and strong push from mainframe-centric to client/server/networking were dominant themes of the early-to-mid 90’s (at least within the GM sphere which, at the time, was close to 50% of EDS revenues IIRC).
When rumors of a spin-offs of “non-core” GM businesses started gaining steam in mid 90’s, I bailed and found greener pastures immediately. Many who’d waited for the bitter end were not so fortunate. Despite the poor ending, EDS was a tremendous place to work back in the day.
Sorry for prattling - I see so few references to EDS anymore.
I was there too. Back in the late 80s, I joined after Perot had left, though.