General Motors (GM) has finally awarded its third generation IT outsourcing contract to multiple outsourcing firms, ending months of speculation. About $7.5 billion of the $15 billion contract over five-years has gone to incumbent vendor EDS, whose old term would expire in June. The new vendors that have bagged the deal are IBM, Capgemini, HP, Wipro, and Compuware Covisint, a unit of Compuware.

One of the biggest outsourcing deals of all times, this deal is marked by GM CIO Ralph Szygenda’s new model of the contract that makes the vendors to work with each other.

Previously, EDS handled the bulk of GM’s technology infrastructure. But now, the six systems integrators (SIs) will be responsible for tying together hardware and software products from a range of vendors in different parts of the GM empire. HP, for example, will manage all the auto firm’s servers.

EDS won approximately 70% of the contracts it pursued, worth $3.8 billion over five years. With this agreement, plus other business that was not part of the recompete, EDS now expects $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion in annualized revenue from GM over the next five years.

HP valued its contract at more than $700 million. IBM said that its deal was worth $500 million, while Capgemini said its contracts were worth more than $500 million. Wipro estimated its work at $300 million.

Wipro’s success means another major contract going to an Indian vendor, after the ABN Amro deal last year.

The deal, one of the largest by a single company in the outsourcing area, has been in the making since June 2005 when GM began to scout around for alternative suppliers to EDS and includes computing operations and application support for areas such as automotive product development, manufacturing and supply chain, as well as GMAC financial services. It is part of GM’s “sthird wave”s of outsourcing and is expected to help the beleaguered automaker, which lost $2.2 billion in the first nine months of 2005, regain lost ground against Japanese competitors like Toyota.