Printer and photocopier company Xerox has won a five-year multi-million euro contract to take over all office printing and document management for IT services firm EDS.
Neither Xerox or EDS would confirm the value of the contract, but it is understood it is in the order of tens of millions of euro.
The contract, which will eventually cover all EDS offices in 22 European countries, will be managed from the Xerox office services operations centre in Dublin.
The Dublin facility is one of two such centres Xerox operates globally as it attempts to move from selling printers and photocopiers to providing customers with a managed service that is billed on a usage basis.
It currently employs just under 60 staff and is managing nine such contracts for international clients such as Lloyds TSB, BT and Sun Microsystems.
The deal further deepens the relationship between Xerox and EDS. The IT services company already resells Xerox office services products as part of its own portfolio of outsourcing and has contracts to manage parts of Xerox's IT infrastructure.
EDS expects to save at least 20 per cent on its printing, copying and scanning by outsourcing the management of its document production to Xerox.
Xerox claims its office services unit can save customers an average of €250 per employee annually. That suggests an annual savings for EDS, with nearly 42,000 employees, of around €10 million.
Xerox employs 1,900 staff in Ireland at facilities in Dublin and Dundalk. EDS employs 320, mostly at a global software centre in Dublin.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)