Outsourcing
Businessweek, 12/29/03: Outsourcing: Look Who's Out Of Sorts
Strapped government agencies are making budget and time demands on their contractors
When Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS ) blew a Dec. 1 deadline to turn on a new Medicaid claims-processing system in Tennessee, state officials decided to fight back. They had outsourced such work to EDS for nearly a decade without a blip. But now the budget had tightened, Medicaid costs were skyrocketing, and the creaky mainframes EDS was supposed to replace were partly to blame. Besides, state officials say, EDS was already two months behind schedule. So for each day of delay, Tennessee is levying a $32,000 fine. An EDS spokesman says the system is expected to go live in a few weeks, but one state official says "the governor is not happy."
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IT Management
Associated Press, 12/31/03: Personal Server Offers Painless Backup
By FRANK BAJAK
NEW YORK - The computer server, workhorse of the Internet and corporate world, just got personal. And remarkably user-friendly.
That's a very good thing indeed, because the chore we all loathe and too often neglect is backing up our exploding data store, which is worth so much more to us than our various computers.
Intimidating to the non-geek, the server is normally thought of as a machine that's entrusted to network managers. Nothing we can fathom without stacks of manuals and hours to burn.
The Mirra Personal Server from Mirra Inc. changes that. It offers mere mortals easy and automatic backups they can handle alone.
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Security
eWeek, 1/2/04: New Worm Spreads Via MSN Messenger
By Dennis Fisher
Anti-virus experts are watching a new worm that spreads through Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Messenger client. The worm is not harmful to infected machines and has infected only a few PCs at this point, according to an analysis by Trend Micro Inc.
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