Virginia, Fairfax Commit Funds To Help Lure New IBM Jobs
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The state of Virginia and Fairfax County each pledged $600,000 to entice International Business Machines Corp. to bring 1,250 high-paying new government contracting jobs to Fairfax.
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IBM has awarded grants to three universities to fund projects that use its new Jazz collaboration technology.
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By Paul Dellinger, The Roanoke Times, Va.  Sep. 16--FAIRLAWN -- The first of several funding applications aimed at creating a New River Valley broadband telecommunications system will go out next week.
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By Sarah Watson, The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Va.  Feb.
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By Anne Krishnan, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.  Mar. 8--IBM wants workers to be prepared when it freezes its pension fund next year and switches workers into investments they will have to manage themselves.
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(InfoWorld) - As blue chip companies in developed marketsÂ scramble to outsourceÂ high-cost jobs to low-cost countries, one of the world's biggest technology companies -- IBMÂ -- seems content to keep more than 1,800 highly trained, well-paid IT engineers at its R&D (research and development) lab in BÃ¶blingen, Germany. You wonder why. The German lab, IBM's first in Europe, was launched in 1957 by Thomas Watson, who believed the company had to develop and manufacturer products in markets where it had large customers bases. In recent years, however, IBM has either shut down or sold many of its computer manufacturing operations around the world, Germany notwithstanding. Yet the BÃ¶blingen lab, one of the group's largest, has remained largely intact. This is no small feat given that it's located in a country with high taxes, strict labor laws, and long vacations -- not what you would call useful qualities when competing with markets such as China and India. Despite the growing importance of China and India, where IBM is beefing up its R&D activities, Herbert Kircher, director of development and chairman of IBM Deutschland Entwicklung, sees a continued strong role for his lab and the others in France, Switzerland, and the U.K. as well as those in the U.S. "Yes, an Indian engineer may cost one third of what an engineer costs in Europe or the U.S., and we need to take advantage of this as we are doing," he said. "But we will not exit high-cost regions such as Europe and the U.S. We need the balance." The German lab has strengths of its own, Kircher is quick to point out. "We are able to retain highly skilled, highly motivated engineers," Kircher said. "Unlike IBM engineers in India and China who work for the company for an average two years, our engineers in Germany stay around 10 years, with some as many as 20 years, bringing with them a lot of project and customer experience as well as market know-how." Whereas IBM R&D executives in China or India often assign development projects to engineers with two years' experience or less, Kircher relies on what he calls "the right mix" of engineers. On the one side are engineers and researchers who are fairly new to the company and bring fresh ideas; on the other are staffers with a wealth of experience. "This mix contributes to our success in developing new products," he said. To make sure innovative ideas don't die in committee, the IBM lab in BÃ¶blingen invites engineers and researchers who have been with the company less than five years to participate in an annual, day-long event to present their ideas to senior executives. "This is a great opportunity to discuss and share ideas," Kircher said. In addition, all young researchers are assigned a mentor who can help push through ideas that, for whatever reason, are blocked in their teams. Staff turnover at the German lab is around 1 percent per year. Of these engineers, a number leave Germany -- not IBM -- to work for the company in the U.S., according to Kircher. "Many of our people are approached by competitors who offer more pay and other benefits but they stay because they like their work and their working environment," he said. "We attach great importance to a corporate culture that honors values and high performance." The IBM labs have developed specific competencies over the years. The German lab, for instance, took a lead in engineering the open-source Linux operating system to run on IBM's Z series mainframe computers. The lab also has expertise in workflow software, collaborating closely with German business software vendor SAP AG, which, it so happens, was founded by a group of former German IBM employees. "Some of our people have their own office at SAP's headquarters," Kircher said. "That's how close the cooperation is." In addition to its RFID (radio frequency identification) competency stemming from research conducted more than 15 years ago, the German lab is developing specialized know-how in the area of data analysis. Researchers in BÃ¶blingen are working on an intelligent software system that, for instance, can automatically analyze huge volumes of data collected from millions of video surveillance cameras. "In the future, we could have systems that recognize and interpret a picture, say, of people who enter an airport with luggage," Kircher said. "The system, for instance, could be designed to automatically detect travellers who enter certain areas with bags and leave without them without having people view all this footage." There are plenty more projects underway, according to Kircher, but they must remain confidential for competitive reasons. "We have a very nice, productive working atmosphere in BÃ¶blingen," the head of IBM's German development said. "People like to work here, and we aim to keep it that way."ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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TechWeb - IBM works with Microsoft and other application vendors to expand the use of its hardware in computer clusters and mainframes.
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IBM, in the latest turn in a  pension plan case that could reverberate through the Fortune  500, said on Friday it is in talks to resolve some of the  issues in a lawsuit that could cost Big Blue billions of  dollars.
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By Anonymous  Armonk, New York-based IBM has announced the formation of a new business unit-IBM Lender Business Process Services Inc. (LBPS), Charlotte, North Carolina-which will specialize in mortgage origination services.
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By Eric Bowen, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.  Feb. 19--McDonald's or Microsoft? Google or General Motors?  Students at eight local schools will make those types of investment decisions over the next two months as they compete in The Stock Market Game.
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Fairfax County is putting its technology prowess to work for its new immigrants on Election Day.
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IBM plans to expand the number of on-demand data centers it has from one to 11 by the end of the year. Users at the AFCOM data center conference in Atlanta had mixed views on the prospect of adopting an outsourcing model or pay-as-you-go pricing.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM Corp. has set up a new application services facility in India's north-eastern state of West Bengal, in a city that has emerged as one of the country's key software and services hubs. The new facility is in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, and is equipped to have about 3,000 staff, a spokeswoman for IBM India said. She could not give a timeframe for the expansion. Kolkata has emerged as a center for IT services because of the surprisingly business-friendly policies of West Bengal's communist government. A number of multinational companies and Indian outsourcers, with bases in Bangalore, Mumbai or Delhi, have expanded to Kolkata in a bid to tap new pools of talent. IBM already has three other delivery centers in the city, and it's home to IBMâs second-largest pool of employees in India after Bangalore. The Armonk, New York, company announced in June that it isÂ investing $6 billion in IndiaÂ over the next three years. It's part of IBM's strategy to grow its presence inÂ emerging markets such as China and Brazil, because they offer vast pools of staff and also because they are attractive markets themselves. IBM had about 43,000 staff in India as of June. It has hired more staff since then for its software and business process outsourcing (BPO) operations in India, according to industry sources.
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Boston officials are considering plans to invest city funds directly into biotechnology companies, part of a broader effort to stimulate the hot industry within city limits and create jobs.
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Gov. George Pataki of New York is set  to unveil on Wednesday plans to boost the economy of the Hudson  River Valley with more than $2.5 billion in high-tech  investments from an IBM-led group, the plan's backers said.
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To those that have, have some more IBM is reaching out to venture capitalists by offering technology and go-to-market help for software start-ups they back.â¦
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International Business Machines Corp. plans to open a new office in Fairfax County that will create 1,200 government contracting jobs in the county, according to sources familiar with the deal.