EDS potentially a Deltek partner?

Tech giant EDS (Electronic Data Systems Corp.) has offered to buy a 52% stake in Bangalore, India based software services firm MphasiS. What does this mean for Deltek? Long term users will remember that the Dallas user conference had representatives from MphasiS demonstrating the then hot! hot! hot! web based Costpoint 4i.

MphasiS was the development partner that created the original Costpoint Web. It is not clear how much of Smart Business Applications was created by MphasiS or what role they now play. A Google search provides interesting historical snippets: Please click on "Read the rest of this article!" link below.

The beta release of Deltek Costpoint 5 which initially incorporated approximately 170 enhancements throughout the software, is a fully integrated ERP solution developed specifically for complex, medium to large-sized project-based businesses... The beta release followed what was tauted as the next generation of Internet-driven back office automation solutions. Deltek Costpoint 4i for the Web, provided an n-tiered, scalable, flexible, and solid Java-based thin client architecture. Deltek Costpoint 4i was never officially released because during development it became apparent that a better alternative to fully web-enable Deltek Costpoint was to web-develop the entire software at one time using Mphasis as the on-site/off-shore development partner. The fully web-based Deltek Costpoint version is expected in general release in 2004 and is now referred to as The Next Generation of Costpoint (NGC), or Deltek Costpoint Version 6.

Will the EDS resources further improve Smart Business Applications? Time will tell...