Wednesday, April 17, 2002

Outsourcing Computerworld, 4/16/02:  IT outsourcing deal with IBM to save Amtrak $85 million By LINDA ROSENCRANCE Amtrak has signed a $229 million IT outsourcing deal with IBM that will save the passenger railroad $85 million over the course of the seven-year deal. The contract, which is an extension of a 10-year agreement between the two companies, calls for IBM Global Services in Armonk, N.Y., to manage Amtrak's entire computing infrastructure from a data center in Manassas, Va. Because Amtrak still owes IBM $101 million from the previous contract, the total of the renegotiated deal is $330 million, according to an IBM spokeswoman. [more] Infoworld, 4/16/02:  Dell Has Little Good to Say About Utility Computing By Dan Neel THE CURRENT HYPE surrounding the evolution of utility computing and its steady march to the enterprise has left a bitter taste on the tongues of Dell executives. Officials for the Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker have little good to say about recent utility computing wins such as IBM's $4 billion deal with American Express to provide all of the financial service company's technology infrastructure as a utility, managed and maintenanced by Big Blue. Dell is tempering its enthusiasm for grid computing because the build-to-order computer maker believes that as utility computing technology currently stands, the model is merely a way to lock a company into a single vendor's technology platform. "It's unclear to us how much of the promotion over utility computing is a self-serving way of changing the rules of the game to benefit [competing vendors] instead of ultimately being a good thing for customers," says Gary Cotshott, the vice president and general manager of Dell Services. [more] IT Management Financial Times, 4/16/02:  Cooking with leftovers The IT sector is adapting to leaner times as customers squeeze more from existing systems, writes Louise Kehoe The high-tech hype machine has collided with the cold reality of what some are calling an information technology spending depression, and there is a growing sense that it will take much more than an uptick in the US economy to pull the industry out of the ditch. Rather than embracing "the next big thing", corporate IT buyers are looking for inexpensive ways to take advantage of existing systems and software, together with guarantees that their next round of IT investments will pay off. It seems that the technology industry has at last got the message. After nearly two years of false predictions that the "upturn" was just around the corner, there are signs of change. New technology development efforts are being redirected towards meeting customer demands for cost savings and improved efficiency. Marketing messages are going "back to basics". Bravado is out. Realism is in. [more] Microsoft ZDNet, 4/16/02:  Allchin calls for brave new PC world By Stephen Shankland Special to ZDNet News SEATTLE--To revive flagging PC profits, the industry must focus on building improvements compelling enough to persuade customers to part with their money, Microsoft exhorted business partners Tuesday. "Innovation is the way to profit," said Jim Allchin, group vice president of Microsoft's platform group. "We haven't spent enough time...to get (customers) to take that next step, buy the next machine, buy the next peripheral, buy the next software." Allchin gave the opening speech here at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, or WinHEC, where the Redmond, Wash., software colossus propagates its agenda to the hardware designers on whom Microsoft depends. "We're all interdependent," Allchin said. [more] Security Infoworld, 4/16/02:  McAfee.com unveils security 'grid' By Sam Costello MCAFEE.COM ON TUESDAY took the wraps off a new strategy and technology that should allow the company to provide broader, more intelligent security services to its customers using XML and Web services, the company said. The company also announced a new software tool central to this strategy and upgrades to three existing products allowing them to work with the new technology. The new initiative, dubbed "Grid Security Services," will use distributed computing techniques like those used in genome research to provide real-time, dynamic security for every McAfee.com customer, said Srivats Sampath, chief executive officer of McAfee.com, which is located in Sunnyvale, Calif. [more] 6:33:31 AM

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