To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (26892 ) 10/11/2000 2:32:17 PM From: LLCF Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 436258 Another Billion down the drain on 'pie in the sky' at Siemans... this and Porsche's "SUV" have marked the top the boom in Germany: iemens Investing $869M in E-Business German electrical engineering and electronics company Siemens AG said it will make an initial investment of 1 billion euros (US$869 million) in a program to integrate all operations electronically. "We have established the largest electronic building site in the world and intend to transform ourselves into an e-driven company in record time," Heinrich von Pierer, president and CEO said Oct. 10 at the opening of the company's first Center for E-Excellence at the Munich airport. The company plans to run all processes electronically and will give all of the company's 440,000 employees in 190 countries Internet access within a year, he said. Additional e-excellence centers are planned in Atlanta and Singapore. "All processes will change ñ quickly and completely," Pierer said. "Leveraging e-business potential will make Siemens a new company." Pierer said about 70% of all Siemens actitives are already networked electronically and that the 1 billion euro investment would integrate separate solutions with use of e-procurement being a key company priority. The 10% of Siemens' total 35 billion euro ($30.4 billion) annual procurement volume that is now processed electronically will rise to more than 50%, he said. Executives said an agreement had been signed with Dallas-based i2 Technologies Inc. to standardize Siemens on the i2 Trade Matrix platform and a full suite of e-business products for design, buying, planning, sales, fulfillment and service for all Siemens global manufacturing and sales operations. The agreement also includes i2's content management and consulting services. They said the i2 open e-business architecture would be designed to support applications from other Siemens technology partners like IBM Corp. and Commerce One Inc. and integrate Siemens' legacy installed base of SAP AG R/2 enterprise resource planning systems. The deployment of i2 platforms is planned across all Siemens operations in the next three years. DAK