Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hoatzin who wrote (10778)	4/7/1998 9:10:00 AM
From: John Chapman	Respond to of 13949

CSHK NEWS exchange2000.com

To: Hoatzin who wrote (10778)	4/13/1998 9:32:00 AM
From: Hoatzin	Respond to of 13949

More on CCI - TRV merger implications from a systems point of view, from today's NY Times: nytimes.com Citigroup's Clash of Technologies If you have an insurance policy with the Travelers Group, don't expect your local agent to be able to help you with your Citicorp credit card any time soon. Despite the promised synergies that are to result from the planned $84 billion merger the two companies announced last week, it would likely take the better part of a decade, at best, before the computer and data base systems of the combined company can be fully integrated. Technology experts point out that Citicorp itself has been trying for 10 years to merge the computers that run its banks in 100 countries into one happy family, and that work is far from done. Meanwhile, the computers in Travelers insurance company are barely on speaking terms with the machines in its Salomon Smith Barney brokerage or its Commercial Credit finance company. In any merger of big companies, which tend to have vast, aging mainframe computer systems, integration is hard work. For Citigroup, as the combined companies plan to call themselves, the task would be even more onerous because their computer departments are already operating at full speed on other projects. "This is the mother of all high wire acts," said Colin Crook, who retired three years ago as Citicorp's chief technology officer. "They are working like the blazes on what they are already doing, yet the payoffs from integration can be quite significant." <snip> But first things first. Travelers still has at least a year to go before Salomon Brothers, which it bought only last fall, is fully integrated into Smith Barney. Citicorp, meanwhile, is in the middle of a year-long sprint to finish its long-delayed global system consolidation. Like many big corporations, both companies are consumed with the vast and tedious task of examining every system they run to make sure they are ready for the introduction of a new European currency next year and that computers will be able to handle dates after the year 2000. "We just don't have the bandwidth to look at the new deal," said a technology executive at one of the companies, who voiced his exasperation only on condition of anonymity.