When IBM decided to go after the outsourcing business in a big way, they asked Southport Partners to help.
The objective was to transform ISSC, their services arm that did data center management for internal and external customers, into an organization that could rival market leader EDS.
Founded by Ross Perot, EDS had been growing rapidly in the business of outsourcing, where they took ownership of the data center operations of a large corporation in exchange for a long term services contract.
IBM knew how to run data centers, but had not done much in the way of big outsourcing deals.