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Technology Stocks : The New QLogic (ANCR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J Fieb who wrote (20258)	1/18/1999 12:34:00 PM
From: eric sahlin	Respond to of 29386

Maybe Ancor will hopefully be a part of this deal. Ford Awards Contract To IBM Global (01/13/99, 7:13 p.m. ET) By Bruce Caldwell, InformationWeek Ford Motor has awarded a five-year contract worth at least $300 million to IBM Global Services for application-development support services aimed at reducing development costs and time, while improving quality. The deal, to be announced Wednesday, complements a contract Ford awarded last month to Compuware to provide deployment and maintenance services for 1,400 applications. Ford selected IBM and Compuware almost a year ago, and has been conducting pilots with both until recently. Both contracts are currently focused on the United States, but are expected to expand internationally to support all Ford operations. The IBM and Compuware pilots involved development of special physical facilities -- Accelerated Solution Centers and Application Management Centers -- and the use of methodologies and tools to increase efficiency. Development and deployment time was cut in half during the pilots, providing a strategic advantage in time to market, said Bud Mathaisel, chief information officer at Ford. The first permanent Accelerated Solution Center will be built in Dearborn, Mich., followed by others to be built overseas. IBM expects it will be able to manage up to 150 concurrent projects at the Dearborn center, which will be staffed with about 1,000 employees, half IBM and half former Ford contract employees, according to Phil Thompson, vice president of manufacturing and aerospace industries at IBM Global Services. Under the terms of the contract, he added, IBM is committed to delivering applications within four to six months. Ford has about 2,600 application-development and maintenance employees, about half of whom are contractors. No Ford non-contract employees will transfer to IBM or Compuware, Mathaisel said. The two agreements are designed to free up Ford employees for more strategic work in process re-engineering and application design, in addition to some programming.