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Vodafone leans on expertise of EDS, IBM for application development, maintenance

LONDON—Wireless giant Vodafone Group plc selected two U.S. companies to manage its application development and maintenance services around the world.

Vodafone chose to outsource the operations to EDS and IBM Corp. after an eight-month process and 11 competitive bidders. The companies will write code and maintain Vodafone systems such as billing and customer service. However, Vodafone stressed it will “retain full strategic control” of the initiative.

The carrier said it hopes to complete the deal in coming weeks. Terms of the contract were not disclosed. The arrangement is part of Vodafone’s strategy to cut costs by 25 percent to 30 percent within five years.

The carrier said it spent about $1 billion on application development and maintenance last year. Vodafone said a substantial majority of its employees who work in those areas will likely become employees of the outsourcers; the rest of the staff will remain with Vodafone.

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