Outsourcing
Government Computer News, 6/3/02: Agencies still wary of seat management
By Jason Miller
The government has run seat management programs for nearly four years, but agencies still are sitting on task orders that could get the program moving.
Agencies continue to wait for the desktop outsourcing concept to be proven on an agencywide level. That is why the massive Navy-Marine Corps Intranet project quickly is becoming the last ray of hope for federal supporters.
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Government Computer News, 6/3/02: NASA considers course correction for its outsourcing
By Wilson P. Dizard III
GCN Staff
Managers of the Outsourcing Desktop Initiative for NASA are reviewing the 4-year-old program to determine if they should reshape it for the future.
ODIN supports about 39,000 users. Its relative success stands in contrast to the mixed record of other federal desktop outsourcing programs.
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Business Week, 6/24/02: The Deal Drought
Tech-service providers aren't signing many new contracts, and the ones in hand are being renegotiated and pared down
Like so many tech outsourcing deals, the transaction looked great on paper. On Mar. 28, 2001, IBM (IBM ) put out a press release trumpeting a five-year, $112 million deal to handle all the computing needs of NeTune Communications, a Culver City (Calif.) startup that digitizes the production process for movie and TV studios. NeTune turned over everything to IBM, from running its computers that transfer digital images at high speeds to providing round-the-clock support to its PCs.
No press release went out when NeTune renegotiated its contract less than a year later. Battered by the threat of an entertainment-industry strike, the September 11 attacks, and Hollywood's slow adoption of digital technology, NeTune cut back its business with IBM. Now, NeTune manages its own computers and uses IBM for just a few things, such as software maintenance. The value of the deal? "It's under $10 million," says Patrick Block, NeTune's chief technology officer.
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Business Week, 6/24/02: Can IBM Shake Its Big Blues?
While short-term prospects are grim, a formidable range of products and services could prove to be a winner for patient investors
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Wall Street's bigger worry is IBM's global-services business, which accounted for some 40% of revenues in 2001. This fastest growing piece of the company may have seen a decline rather than the forecasted rise in the first quarter. "I expect services to have missed fairly substantially on the revenue line," says Daniel Kuntsler, analyst with JP Morgan Chase.
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The Wall Street Journal, 6/14/02: Procter & Gamble to Outsource About 80% of Back-Office Work
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Procter & Gamble Co. said it plans to farm out about 80% of its back-office functions -- ranging from travel services to payroll and accounting -- in what would be a landmark piece of business for the outsourcing industry.
People close to the Cincinnati consumer-products company valued the plan at about $1 billion a year. Such deals typically last seven to 10 years, which would make it one of the largest outsourcing pacts ever. The agreement would also accelerate a trend among outsourcing companies to expand from the traditional work of running computer networks and phone systems to more labor-intensive jobs like processing expenses and answering employee questions about stock options.
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IT Management
Internet Week, 6/4/02: Many Companies Track IT Assets Poorly
By Tom Smith
In one of the most difficult IT spending environments ever, it may come as a surprise that few enterprises have good systems for tracking the IT assets they already have.
But that's precisely the finding disclosed today by Gartner Inc. The big research firm estimated that less than 25 percent of enterprises have a life cycle IT asset management program. The researcher has found that 40 percent of its client hardware assets are not tracked with automated tools. A full 90 percent of sites audited by Gartner have marginal practices for hardware asset management.
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PC Support
ZDNet, 6/13/02: Most bizarre ways to trash your laptop
By Matthew Broersma
British intelligence service MI5 may be well-known for leaving top-secret laptops on trains, in taxis and at other public locations, but Britons have also found a variety of innovative ways to destroy their portable computers--from running them over to dropping them off bridges.
UK computer insurer Complete Computer Cover this week compiled a list of the 10 most bizarre ways its customers have wrecked their laptops, drawn from claims data over the past five years. The results underscore just how vulnerable sophisticated computer technology can be when exposed to the hazards of the outside world.
At the top of the list was the claim of a Yorkshire university student who dropped his laptop off a 20-foot bridge into a river after being pushed by a friend. The student took the trouble to provide a highly detailed diagram explaining how the disaster took place.
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