Industry News
EDS Awarded $99 Million Contract
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has awarded EDS a contract to continue providing user and production support, systems maintenance and management services for the computer application system used to process Medicare Part B claims. The contract contains a one-year base period with four options years and is valued at $99 million if all options are exercised.
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Raytheon Awarded Contract Worth $82.1 Million in the Former Soviet Union
A subsidiary of Raytheon Company has been awarded a task order with a potential value of US$82.1 million by the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to provide Mission Support in the former Soviet Union (FSU).
Through this six-year task order, which has a base year and five one-year options, Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC (RTSC) will provide comprehensive logistics integration support, including equipment support and services, program support services, infrastructure services, an enterprise information management system, and program management. Work will be performed in FSU countries, primarily in the Russian Federation.
This effort is part of the U.S. government's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program that assists successor states of the FSU in reducing their stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the infrastructure supporting them. Work on the task order, under DTRA's IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) CTR Integrating Contracts (CTRIC) Program, is expected to be completed by July 2011.
RTSC has been helping DTRA enhance global security since 1988, supporting the Department of Defense's cooperative efforts with countries of the former Soviet Union. RTSC also provides DTRA with: elimination of strategic bombers and air-to-surface missiles in Ukraine; elimination of SS-25 missiles and launchers; assistance in the transportation of nuclear warheads in Russia to safe, secure storage sites; monitoring of an intercontinental ballistic missile final assembly plant in Russia; logistics services to CTR equipment; and transportation of CTR cargo via air and sea to the former Soviet Union.
DTRA safeguards America's interests from weapons of mass destruction by controlling and reducing the threat to the United States and its allies and providing quality tools and services for the warfighter. This Department of Defense combat support agency is located at Fort Belvoir, Va., and operates field offices worldwide.
RTSC provides technology solutions for defense, federal and commercial customers worldwide. It specializes in Mission Support, engineering product solutions and engineering service solutions. Mission Support-Raytheon's integrated approach to providing total life-cycle support, predicting customer needs, sensing problems and proactively applying solutions-enables Raytheon to maintain readiness and deliver operational capability on demand, enhancing customer mission success.
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Dell to Establish Customer Contact Center in Philippines
Dell will open a customer contact center in the Metro-Manila area early next year to provide technical and customer support for consumer customers and has selected a site in Makati City, Philippines, as its initial base of recruiting and training operations.
Dell plans initially to hire and train approximately 700 technical support and customer service agents and will begin recruiting for 70 key leadership and administrative positions by the end of this month. Dell expects to begin recruiting and hiring technical support specialists in November from new offices in the RCBC Plaza Tower in Makati City. The company will complete due diligence this fall on a location for its contact center, which is scheduled to begin operations in February 2006.
Dell selected the Philippines for the customer contact center expansion because of its high-quality work force with strong language and communication skills. The Philippines has approximately 100 contact centers, more than 200 colleges and universities and more than 650,000 college students.
Dell, the world's largest computer systems company and America's Most Admired company, has consistently led its industry in phone-based personal computer technical support services for customers. It has expanded its customer services capabilities from hardware to include software and applications services such as assistance with virus and spyware issues. Dell also has expanded its customer support channels to include online, such as the Dell Community Forum, e-mail and chat in order to give customers multiple, convenient ways to access technical support.
Dell's customer contact center network today extends to more than 30 dedicated locations around the world that provide support anywhere in the world any time of day. The company is using its business process improvement expertise, gained in supply-chain management and manufacturing, in its contact center operations to give its customers customized products and services at the best possible value.
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General Dynamics, Carroll County, State of Maryland Partner to Build Production and Operations Center
General Dynamics Robotic Systems (GDRS), a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics Land Systems, has collaborated with the Carroll County Industrial Development Authority and the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development to build a new manufacturing facility in the Westminster Technology Park. Approximately 135 jobs over four years will be created with this expansion. Groundbreaking on the 150,000-square-foot facility was Aug. 9 and the new building is projected to open in the second quarter of 2006. General Dynamics Land Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics.
The initiative will consolidate machining and assembly operations from several leased facilities and will expand General Dynamics Robotics Systems’ capability to manufacture the ammunition handling system on the U.S. Army’s newest combat vehicle, the Stryker Mobile Gun System. The effort also allows General Dynamics Robotics Systems to convert its existing facility in the Westminster Technology Park into an advanced engineering center.
Under terms of the agreement, General Dynamics will invest approximately $2 million, and lease the building from the developer, Conowego Contractors, who is investing approximately $9 million. The State of Maryland and Carroll County are providing additional financial incentives valued at a combined value of approximately $700,000 to support this growth.
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McKeon Named Chairman of ThalesRaytheonSystems
Brian McKeon has been appointed chairman of ThalesRaytheonSystems, Ltd., the equally-owned transatlantic joint venture between Thales Group and Raytheon Company. He replaces Terry Heil who has retired. McKeon will continue to serve as vice president of Command and Control Systems for Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business unit. He previously led the Command and Control/Battle Management programs group in Raytheon's former C3I business.
McKeon has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Brandeis University and a master's degree in computer engineering from the University of Lowell.
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SAP Appoints Ike Nassi to Oversee SAP Research, Americas
Representatives of SAP AG announced the appointment of Ike Nassi, Ph.D., to oversee the company’s major research activities and partnerships in the Americas. In his new position as senior vice president of research, Nassi becomes a key member of the SAP Research management team and will report to Peter Zencke, executive board member, SAP AG.
SAP Research is a global organization within SAP that identifies emerging IT trends, conducts vital research and development for new technologies, and fosters the best entrepreneurial talent to support future growth.
Dr. Nassi brings a wealth of experience in business and academia to his new role at SAP. Most recently, he was the founder and CTO of Firetide, a wireless mesh networking company based in Los Gatos, California. Over the past 30 years, he has held a number of executive management positions in engineering and development for companies such as Apple, where he ran their Advanced Technology Group, Cisco Systems, Digital Equipment and Encore Computer. His academic experience includes teaching and research appointments at Boston University, the University of California at Berkeley, and MIT.
Nassi holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science from Stony Brook University. Dr. Nassi will be based at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California.
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Movicel Selects Nortel for Wireless Network in Africa
Movicel has selected Nortel to upgrade its wireless network in Angola to CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology to boost capacity of its MoviNet Service and help address growing nationwide demand for advanced wireless data services like telemedicine and Internet access.
Movicel is Africa's largest CDMA operator, providing high speed wireless broadband services to 350,000 subscribers in Angola's capital Luanda and eight major provinces - Bengo, Kuanza Norte, Cabinda, Benguela, Huambo, Namibe, Zaire and Huila.
Nortel and Movicel demonstrated the new EV-DO services at the annual International Fair of Luanda (FILDA 2005) in Angola, July 11-17, 2005. The technology won the "Best Innovation Golden Lion" award as the outstanding technology at the show. FILDA is considered the biggest business and industrial exhibition of Angola with approximately 17 countries participating, including Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and several other African countries.
With commercial implementation of EV-DO, Movicel will be able to expand into new markets and offer enhanced wireless broadband services to large enterprises, medium and small offices, and residential subscribers.
Nortel has designed, installed and launched more than 300 wireless networks in over 70 countries. Nortel was the first supplier with wireless networks operating in all advanced radio technologies and is the only end-to-end provider of all next generation wireless solutions.
Nortel's experience in Africa spans more than 20 years. It has served leading local enterprise and service provider customers including Telecom Egypt, Cellcom Liberia, Multi-Links Nigeria and SITA South Africa.
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Alcatel Awarded GSM/GPRS Mobile Network Expansion for Coscom in Uzbekistan
Representatives of Alcatel announced that the company has been awarded a new GSM/GPRS mobile network expansion by Coscom, a leading mobile operator in Uzbekistan and a subsidiary of MCT Corp. With this multi-million Euro frame agreement, Alcatel will extend Coscom's network capacity while updating the existing infrastructure with the latest mobile Next Generation Network (NGN) technology. This solution will provide Coscom with a cost effective path possibility to 3G.
The Alcatel mobile NGN solution should increase the GSM/GPRS network capacity enabling Coscom to provide new multimedia services to its subscribers, while optimizing long-term cost structure by converging 2G and 3G services on a single platform in the long term. Delivery of the equipment is planned in phases throughout 2005-2006, with the first phase to be completed in Q3, 2005.
Under the terms of this contract Alcatel will supply Coscom with its Evolium™ GSM/GPRS end-to-end solutions, including Base Station Sub-systems (BSS), extensions of the installed Mobile Switching Centers (NSS), as well as PDH MW solutions that will be deployed in the Coscom network among others in the cities of Samarkand and Tashkent.
Alcatel will also provide Coscom with its Alcatel Spatial Atrium innovative, standard-based distributed mobile switching solution (DMSC). The cornerstone of this solution is the Alcatel 5020 Spatial Atrium Softswitch, a multi-standard mobile call server controlling distributed media gateways and managing call/session control for voice and data services.
