Industry News
Lockheed Martin Awarded $2.9 Billion F/A 22 Raptor Lot 5 Production Contract
Lockheed Martin has been awarded a US$2.9 billion fixed-price contract by the U.S. Air Force for continued production of F/A-22 aircraft through November 2007.
The new Lot 5 production contract will increase the total number of contracted aircraft to 107. To date, 53 aircraft have been delivered to the U.S. Air Force and 66 have completed final assembly. The Air Force is flying the F/A-22 Raptor at four bases across the United States and is preparing for Initial Operational Capability in December with the 1st Fighter Wing’s 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base, Va.
The F/A-22 Raptor, the world's most advanced and only 5th Generation fighter in production today, is built at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics facilities in Palmdale, Calif.; Meridian, Miss.; Marietta, Ga.; and Fort Worth, Texas, as well as Boeing's plant in Seattle, Wash. The F/A-22 Raptor program also includes 1000 nationwide suppliers and subcontractors in 42 states. Final assembly and initial flight testing of the Raptor occurs at the Marietta plant facilities.
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EDS Signs $500+ Million IT Services Contract With Royal Ahold, One of the Largest Global Retailers
Representatives of EDS announced a five-year, approximately US$500 million global information technology (IT) enterprise outsourcing agreement with Royal Ahold, the world’s fourth-largest grocery retailer.
To support its strategic growth initiatives, EDS will provide Ahold with a flexible IT infrastructure and applications management services to transform and re-engineer its global operations, which include more than 4,000 supermarkets and retail outlets in Europe and the United States. This flexible IT strategy will provide the company with the agility to respond to market opportunities while EDS purchases, maintains and supports the needed hardware and software.
As part of the arrangement, EDS will assume responsibility for the global retailer’s IT infrastructure, which will include hosting Ahold’s mainframe and midrange servers, providing local area network and voice network support. This will help reduce Ahold’s total cost of ownership while allowing it to more effectively manage front- and back-office technology investments.
EDS Agility Alliance partners Cisco, EMC, Microsoft, Sun, among others, have jointly collaborated on the contract and will work together to deliver innovative IT and business solutions to Ahold.
This agreement also consolidates Ahold’s helpdesk support. EDS will manage Ahold’s computing workplace of more than 9,600 desktop and laptops, printers and e-mail users and provide help desk support for more than 10,000 users.
Additionally, approximately 450 Ahold employees located in the Netherlands and in the U.S. will transition to EDS.
Ahold’s food retail operations in the United States comprise of Stop & Shop, Giant-Landover, Giant-Carlisle and Tops. Ahold’s European retail operations include brand names such as Albert Heijn, Hypernova, Etos and Gall & Gall.
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General Dynamics Awarded $70 Million Contract to Provide Australia with M1A1 Abrams AIM Tanks
General Dynamics Land Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, was awarded the final US$42 million delivery order of a US$70 million foreign military sales contract from the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command to provide 59 refurbished M1A1 Abrams Integrated Management (AIM) tanks to the Commonwealth of Australia. The M1A1 AIM tanks will replace the Australian Land Forces’ aging Leopard main battle tanks.
Survivable and affordable vehicles with excellent potential for network centric warfare, the Abrams M1A1 AIM tanks will provide Australian Forces with increased connectivity, mobility, firepower and survivability. Additionally, the M1A1 AIM provides a cost-efficient armor solution as it incurs low operational and support costs, and reports high operational readiness rates. Under this contract, M1A1 Abrams tanks from the U.S. Army inventory will be completely disassembled, overhauled and refurbished to like-new “zero-mileage” condition.
The tank has a cruising range of up to 480 kilometers, the ability to reach speeds of 66 kph on-road and up to 48 kph off-road (while carrying four crewman and ammunition). The primary weapon is a 120mm smooth-bore cannon; it is also equipped with a 50-caliber machine gun for the tank commander and two additional 7.62mm machine guns. The Abrams can fire an advanced kinetic energy tungsten penetrator round against vehicles and a multipurpose round for infantry support.
The Abrams’ survivability is enhanced through its nuclear, biological and chemical protection system, crew compartmentalization from munitions and armored blow-off panels, which allow stowed munitions to vent to the atmosphere if detonated.
Work will be performed by existing General Dynamics and Department of Defense employees in Anniston, Ala.; Lima, Ohio; Scranton, Pa.; and Tallahassee, Fl. The 59 M1A1 AIM tanks are scheduled for delivery to Australian Land Forces in two shipments, in June and December 2006. The tanks are part of a large worldwide fleet with known, stable operating costs, and are expected to be in service beyond 2020.
General Dynamics will offer the Commonwealth of Australia the same comprehensive material and logistics support available to the Abrams fleet worldwide. General Dynamics Land Systems-Australia, a subsidiary, will take the lead in working with the Commonwealth to structure and implement a robust logistics system for the vehicles.
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Raytheon Awarded $8.6 Million Contract for Radar on Japan's U-125A Search and Rescue Aircraft
Raytheon Company was recently awarded an US$8.6 million contract to provide the APS-134LW radar hardware to Toshiba for subsequent delivery to the Japan Air Self Defense Force (JASDF). Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems (SAS) will deliver seven receiver-exciter-synchronizer-processors and four antenna gimbals under a fixed price, follow-on production contract from Toshiba.
The work will be managed and manufactured at the company's McKinney, Texas, location. The APS-134LW radar is part of Raytheon's SeaVue family of maritime and littoral surveillance mission systems. As such, the APS-134LW provides high performance capabilities in navigation, weather, long-range search, and small target detection to support JASDF's SAR (search and rescue) mission applications. Raytheon's co-product partnership with Toshiba provides the APS-134LW as the basis of what JASDF calls the APQ-2 Radar.
Toshiba is supplying the radar transmitter and antenna reflector for the APQ-2, which is installed on the JASDF U-125A (Hawker 800) aircraft. Raytheon also supports Toshiba with yearly spares, repairs and technical support.
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SAP Hires Leading Industry Executive to Head Global Retail and Wholesale Business
Representatives of SAP AG announced the appointment of Rick Chavie to lead global solution management for SAP’s retail and wholesale industry solutions. As senior vice president of Industry Solution Management, Trading, Chavie will be responsible for defining, shaping and delivering SAP’s market-leading retail and wholesale solutions. He will also be a key player in growing SAP’s retail partner ecosystem. Chavie will be based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Chavie has more than 20 years of experience directing major initiatives for leading retailers and consumer products companies across North America, Europe and Asia. He has worked in nearly all aspects of the business, including retail strategy, demand and supply optimization and next-generation technology development. Prior to joining SAP, Chavie led strategy, international and business process improvement at The Home Depot; was in charge of IT and re-engineering for an apparel division of Netherlands-based retailer C&A; held partner and leadership roles in retail, strategy and supply chain at Deloitte Consulting and Accenture; and most recently was CEO of marketing technology firm Infolenz.
Chavie received his master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School and his bachelor’s degree in German and accounting from the University of St. Thomas ( Minnesota). He is also a Fulbright Scholar in international trade, having studied at Germany’s Saarland University and the University of Cologne.
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Microsoft and Open Text Announce New Strategic Relationship; Open Text to Introduce New Solutions
This week at LiveLinkUp Orlando 2005, Microsoft Corp. and Open Text Corporation announced a new strategic relationship to optimize Open Text’s comprehensive enterprise content management (ECM) solutions for the Microsoft platform. This effort will take advantage of both companies’ global scale and complementary products to enable ECM solutions in large, complex customer environments.
As part of the announcement, Open Text, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, becomes a worldwide ECM partner with Microsoft. By deepening the relationship between Open Text and Microsoft, the companies will work to enhance Open Text solutions in ways that combine the power of the Microsoft platform and Open Text’s deep understanding of the ECM needs of large enterprises. The resulting end-to-end solutions from Open Text, which will include vertical-market offerings in financial services and government, will help companies address the complexity of managing an ever-growing volume of online information, a major source of productivity loss and compliance risks.
With today’s announcement, Open Text is also introducing two new solutions that use Open Text’s Livelink ECM suite and Microsoft Office SharePoint ® Portal Server 2003. The expanded relationship and new solutions were unveiled to customers at Open Text’s LiveLinkUp Orlando 2005 user conference, underway this week in Orlando, Fla.
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BP Announces First Oil from Farragon
Representatives of BP, on behalf of the Farragon field partners, announced that oil has begun flowing from the Farragon field, 140 miles north-east of Aberdeen. This is expected to peak at 18,000 barrels of oil per day when the second well comes on stream later this year.
Farragon has been developed as a subsea tie-back to the BP-operated Andrew platform via the Cyrus subsea manifold. Farragon is a £74 million ($130 million) development and is expected to recover around 18 million barrels of oil.
Dave Blackwood, BP’s Director for North Sea operations, said the Farragon development was another example of successful investment that maximises the use of existing North Sea infrastructure.
Oil from the field will be processed through existing facilities on the Andrew platform and exported onwards to the Forties Pipeline System.
The partners in the Farragon field are BP (operator) 50%, Eni (30%) and Nexen Petroleum U.K. Ltd (20%).
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RATP Seizes on Wireless LAN Technology from Cisco as a New Tool for Business Transformation
The Paris subway, one of the world's top underground networks, has joined a growing group of transport operators pioneering the use of wireless local area networks (WLANs) for business transformation.
The Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), which runs Paris's public transport networks, is piloting the use of advanced wireless technology to improve customer service and employee productivity. Cisco Systems is providing the network infrastructure and Appear Networks is providing the communications platform for this new service.
The applications, which are supported by a Wi-Fi network that also provides wireless Internet access to commuters, are already having a significant impact on operations at the test station of La Défense.
And, as has been the experience of other Wi-Fi operators worldwide, RATP has learned of the advantages of providing wireless support to employees while offering it to customers at the same time.
To date, many transport operators have looked into Wi-Fi, particularly for public hotspot applications.
However, says Christophe Servais, Cisco service provider mobility marketing manager, RATP's use of wireless employee applications, following the experience of operators such as the Stockholm Subway, confirms WLAN is now seen as an important tool in business transformation.
Over the past year, employees at the station have been using Wi-Fi-enabled personal digital assistants (PDAs) to access a wide range of business-related applications, from train timetables to customer satisfaction surveys.
Upon entering the hotspot, station employees are automatically recognized and receive direct access to personalized applications related to their job function and information that may be required by passengers.
This is what turns the La Défense Wi-Fi hotspot into what is now being called a workspot --- an intelligent working environment.
Delivered in real time over wireless, workspot applications have proved so popular that the number of people using them has almost doubled, from 110 to 200, as a result of employee demand.
Appear Networks is so named because its context-aware applications appear on the PDA desktop as and when they are needed, then disappear when they are no longer relevant.
The applications, delivered and enhanced by an Appear Context Engine, the 'brain' of Appear Networks' software platform, Appear IQ, cover three broad areas of operation.
The first is related to customer information and includes tools such as real-time traffic reports, timetables, local area maps and information, itinerary plans and so on, which all help platform staff answer customer queries quickly and easily.
The second area is what Xavier Jombart, southern Europe area manager for Appear Networks, calls "operations and maintenance applications".
Thirdly, there are plans to use the system for security applications such as remote monitoring of video camera feeds or triggering geo-localized silent alerts from a PDA.
Underpinning the system is a Cisco end-to-end wireless network owned by Naxos, a telecommunications subsidiary of RATP, which was installed across La Défense station and the whole of the number 38 bus line.
