New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra Co-operative has selected EDS as the company with which it will continue negotiations over outsourcing its global IT infrastructure.

Fonterra's chief information officer, Marcel van den Assum, said that after an intensive round of due diligence and negotiations with both EDS and Hewlett Packard, the company was now moving into the fourth phase of its project.

"Both EDS and HP submitted very robust responses to our Request for Proposal," he said. "The due diligence process examined those responses in more detail and enabled all parties to get a better understanding of one another, the scope of the services and the technical demands of it.

"That included a large number of site and customer visits on five continents."

EDS New Zealand managing director Rick Ellis said his company was pleased to be proceeding to the next stage of discussions with Fonterra.

Fonterra engaged the leading sourcing advisory firm TPI in December last year to assist Fonterra in the evaluation and negotiation of its IT global outsourcing options. van den Assum said the selection of EDS for the final phase of the project was a further step in a very thorough analysis of whether outsourcing is the best option for Fonterra.