IBM scores $1B in Danish contracts
617678
IBM announced agreements with two Danish companies on outsourcing deals that together are worth more than $1 billion over 10 years.
754238
(InfoWorld) - The Danish government could save around 125 million Danish krone ($21 million) over the next five years if it adopted the OpenOffice.org productivity software instead of upgrading to Microsoft's Office 2007 suite. Doing nothing could save it even more, according to a study by consultancy RambÃ¸ll Management A/S. RambÃ¸ll compared the cost of different ways of implementing the Danish Parliament's June 2 decision that government institutions exchanging information digitally with citizens or companies must do so in file formats based on open standards from Jan. 1, 2008. The Danish Open Source Business Association commissioned the report, which was published in Danish in August. An English version of the report was linked from the OpenOffice.orgÂ Web siteÂ last week. Adam Lebech, head of office at the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency, welcomed the debate the report had started, but warned that the numbers did not tell the whole story. "It's very difficult to make these calculations because you have to make a lot of assumptions," he said Wednesday. "The report doesn't look at savings from open standards, it only looks at costs. ... It's not a business case," he said. The report examined the cost of switching the exchange of documentation to two possible open standard document formats: Office Open XML and OpenDocument Format (ODF). Microsoft developed the Office Open XML file format for its Office 2007 software suite, and proposed it to European standards body ECMA International for standardization. In late August, an ECMA technical committee chaired by Microsoft was still discussing draft version 1.4 of the specification, whereas the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved the rival ODF standard in May. ODF is the format used by open source software suite OpenOffice.org, and also by proprietary software including Sun Microsystems' StarOffice and IBM's WorkPlace. RambÃ¸ll estimated the cost of two ways the government could switch its document exchange to Office Open XML: by using free file translation tools Microsoft has said it will provide for existing versions of its Office software, or by upgrading to Office 2007 when it becomes available. For ODF, RambÃ¸ll compared the cost of migrating to OpenOffice.org software, or of using file translators, still in development, to open and save ODF documents from within Microsoft Office. It concluded that if the government continued its policy of progressively upgrading to newer versions of Microsoft Office, the cost of licensing and installing the upgrades, and switching document exchange to the Office Open XML format, would cost around 380 million krone. The cost of continuing to upgrade Microsoft Office whileÂ switching to ODFÂ would be slightly more, because of greater file conversion and support costs. Migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, while switching to ODF, would cost around 255 million krone, RambÃ¸ll said. The cheapest route, at 105 million krone, would be to adopt Office Open XML -- but to stick with the versions of Microsoft Office already in use, primarily Office XP and 2003, RambÃ¸ll said. Sticking with current versions of the software and switching to ODF would cost marginally more. The report, Estimating the Costs of Implementing Office OpenXML and ODF in the Central Government, isÂ available in EnglishÂ from Danish Open Source Business Association.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.
532449
IBM on Wednesday said it has settled portions of an ongoing lawsuit related to its pension plan and said the potential liability for the other claims that remain on appeal is capped at $1.
52378
IBM has reached an agreement in principle to sell its personal computer business to Lenovo Group, China&#39;s largest PC maker, in a deal valued at $1 billion to $2 billion, people close to the negotiations said.
315673
The sale of National Australia Bank&#39;s Irish businesses reached a surprise conclusion yesterday when Denmark&#39;s Danske Bank clinched a Â£967m takeover.
446864
U.S. stocks to watch on Wednesday: IBM CORP. : The computer maker said it sealed deals worth more than &#36;1 billion in new work with two European companies from which the information technology company just acquired two Danish services providers.
595338
BEIJING - Lenovo Group has agreed to pay US$1.25 billion ($1.75 billion) for IBM&#39;s personal computer business, lifting China&#39;s largest PC maker to third in global rankings and giving it a globally recognised brand.
587996
IBM Corp. has offered to buy Telelogic AB, a Swedish developer of software development tools, in a cash deal valued at 5.2 billion Swedish krona, or about US$745 million, the companies announced Monday.
475101
Germany's IKB Industriebank says  losses from its exposure to US sub-prime mortgages will reach almost $1bn.
554997
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Dagrofa, one of Denmark's largest providers of goods for the retail sector, today announced a 50 million Euro, 10-year strategic agreement for IBM to manage Nord Data's IT infrastructure and applications.
685220
TechWeb - IBM won two contracts from a major Spanish energy company and a contract extension from an Italian banking group.
762621
(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.
583347
Sun Microsystems will pay $1 billion for Swedish software company MySQL, whose open-source database is used for some of the most widely visited Web sites in the world.
309249
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has completed its acquisition of Vallent Corporation, a privately held software company based in Bellevue, Washington with more than 400 employees.  IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Vallent on November 28, 2006.
538236
IBM planned to announce yesterday that it will invest US$250 million over the next five years and employ 1,000 people in a new business unit to support products and services related to sensor networks.
70426
IBM has signed a 7-year, $969 million  contract with British bank Lloyds TSB to supply it with  Internet telephony and data services, The U.S.-based computer  giant said on Monday.
571787
IBM has agreed to pay $745 million for Telelogic AB, a Swedish developer of tools for managing large software development products.