MaSSSoftech

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Dell Inc.’s proposed $3.9 billion buyout of Perot Systems Corp. reflects the second-largest personal-computer maker’s ambitions in the market for health- care information technology.

Dell offered $30 a share in cash yesterday for Perot, 31 times its earnings in 2009, according to Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital in New York. Hewlett-Packard Co. bought Dallas-based EDS last year for $13.2 billion, 14 times that company’s 2008 earnings, Reitzes said.

“The Perot deal offers them plenty of opportunities in the health-care and federal space,” said Paul Roehrig, an analyst at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc. “Dell can build a leaner, commodity-based services offering to be an interesting competitor.”

With Perot, founded by former U.S. presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, Dell gains a partner to boost sales of computer services as consumers and companies trim PC purchases to cope with the economic slump. Larger services units helped International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard withstand the recession better than Dell, whose sales slumped 22 percent last quarter.

Perot, whose customers include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gets about half of sales from hospitals, physicians’ practices and health-insurance companies. President Barack Obama’s plan to expand health-care insurance coverage to virtually all Americans, if passed by Congress, could boost Perot’s health care-related business.

Electronic Health Records

Tighter budgets for hospitals and a shift to electronic health records also will bolster Perot’s sales, according to Reik Read, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee. The U.S. economic stimulus bill included $20 billion to upgrade health-care information technology, Read said in a report.

Dell’s services business will generate annual sales of about $8 billion and the deal will probably boost profit in fiscal 2012, Round Rock, Texas-based Dell said yesterday. Hewlett-Packard’s services revenue was $22.4 billion in 2008, and IBM’s was $58.9 billion.

“It doesn’t necessarily make them a contender to IBM and HP,” said Dane Anderson, an analyst at Stamford, Connecticut- based Gartner Inc. “It’s digestible from a size perspective and brings them to a level where they can compete.”

“We’ve had services capability and we’ve been trying to grow that organically,” Paul Prince, chief technology officer for Dell’s enterprise group, said yesterday in an interview. “It’s pretty clear that we felt like customers were looking for a bigger picture, bigger solution at a faster pace than we could have done just by growing it organically.”

Services Strategy

EDS, the world’s second-largest computer-services provider after IBM, helped Hewlett-Packard increase its services revenue 93 percent last quarter as sales at the PC division fell 18 percent. Perot also was the founder of EDS, established in 1962.

“The economy is forcing a lot of companies to rethink their services strategy,” said Alexander Motsenigos, director of global services markets and trends for Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC. The researcher estimates the 2008 global services market at $806 billion. “Whether it’s going to be successful is a different question.”

Perot shares, which jumped 65 percent yesterday, rose 1 cent to $29.57 at 9:34 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Dell, which ranks second to Hewlett-Packard in PC sales, fell 25 cents to $15.76 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Dell already has worked with Perot in the services market for the past two years, the companies said. Once the acquisition is complete, Plano, Texas-based Perot will become Dell’s services unit, headed by Perot’s current CEO, Peter Altabef.

Perot Contracts

Perot manages customers’ computer systems, data centers, software and Web sites through multiyear contracts. The company reported sales of $2.78 billion last year. Second-quarter net income rose 3 percent even as revenue slipped 11 percent.

The company’s revenue was forecast to decline 9 percent this year, according to the average estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Dell’s revenue will drop 16 percent, analysts project.

Michael Dell, 44, called the purchase a “profound” move. “This isn’t a services acquisition. It’s the right services company for us,” he said yesterday in an audio message to both companies’ employees that was included in a regulatory filing. The deal “illustrates pretty clearly how we’re remaking Dell around a clear vision, on our terms.”

Cost Cutting

Dell, which lost the PC market lead to Hewlett-Packard three years ago, has relied on cost reductions including job cuts to help prop up profit amid the recession. The company, aiming to save $4 billion a year, already has farmed out 40 percent of manufacturing and said it expects to contract out even more. Still, net income dropped 23 percent last quarter.

While Michael Dell has predicted a new version of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system for PCs, due next month, should help boost PCs sales, he also said the company doesn’t expect to see a huge uptick in PC upgrades until 2010.

Perot’s Chairman, Ross Perot Jr., may join Dell’s board of directors. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. advised Perot on the transaction, and Morgan Stanley advised Dell. Perot agreed to pay a termination fee of $130 million to Dell if it breaches the agreement.

Perot is unlikely to get another bid, given that Dell has an established relationship with the company, the offer is all cash and Dell is paying a “significant valuation premium,” Baird’s Read said.

Investors say they aren’t concerned that Dell may have to hold off on other purchases, at least for a while.

“They have enough on their plate,” said Kimberly Caughey, investment analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group Inc. in Pittsburgh, which owns about 230,000 Dell shares. “They need to look at their portfolio and see how they are going to market themselves.”

To contact the reporters on the story: Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net; Katie Hoffmann in New York at khoffmann4@bloomberg.net

UAB Vice President for Student Affairs Douglas Rigney, Ph.D., has been named interim vice president for Information Technology (IT), a position he will assume Sept 25.

Rigney's appointment comes as a result of the departure of outgoing Vice President Sheila Sanders, who is retiring from UAB after more than 25 years.

"Doug was a natural fit to lead IT during this interim period because of his background in engineering, his long institutional memory and understanding of UAB operations, as well as the leadership role he played when we implemented the Banner student information system," said President Carol Garrison. "That was a very complex implementation, executed with strong leadership and organizational skills that will serve IT well moving forward.

"Sheila Sanders will be missed. She is another with a long history at UAB, and she has provided outstanding direction to IT," Garrison said. "We wish her all the best."

Rigney has served as vice president for Student Affairs since 2006. For the immediate future, the division will report directly to Provost Eli Capilouto.

Rigney has a long association with UAB, dating back to the 1970s when he began his undergraduate education, leading to a bachelor of science in engineering. After three years as an engineer with Alabama Power, he returned to UAB and earned a bachelor's degree in materials engineering and master's and doctoral degrees in biomedical engineering. He joined the UAB faculty in 1989 as an assistant professor in materials science and engineering, moving up the ranks to professor of biomedical engineering in 2005. Rigney also has been assistant dean for Academic and Student Affairs and associate dean of the School of Engineering.

Active both in the profession and community, Rigney has served in leadership roles in the Academy of Dental Materials, the Society of Biomaterials and the Alabama Electron Microscopy Society, plus the UAB National Alumni Society, Cahaba Heights and the Community Schools Advisory Council.

Posted by Tyler Greer on 9/21/2009 11:00:00 PM

To Address Both Short- and Long-Term IT Talent Challenges, Deloitte Offers Recommendations to Organizations for Improved Talent Strategies and Execution

NEW YORK, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- According to new research from Deloitte, IT functional leaders have an increasingly clear understanding of what they must do to effectively support their organizations' business strategies. However, existing IT talent strategies and programs appear to be falling short - leaving IT without the talent necessary to do the job.

Based on a global survey of 306 IT decision-makers and executive business managers, and 15 subsequent one-on-one interviews with select respondents, current IT talent issues are having an impact on IT and business performance. Based on the research, Deloitte identifies two major IT talent gaps: growing talent gap for IT leaders and project managers; and the critical need for improved IT talent strategies and program execution. Additional key findings included:

* The majority of survey respondents (51%) strongly believe talent issues have limited their organization's productivity and efficiency.

* Half of the respondents say the talent shortage is limiting their ability to innovate, which is the strategic core of the benefits that technology can bring to a business.

* Significant numbers of respondents indicate that IT talent issues are having a material impact on other key dimensions of business success -- growth (58%), speed to market (54%), quality (53%) and customer relationships (53%).

* The vast majority of IT organizations surveyed expect to expand their workforces over the next three-to-five years. In fact, nearly half of the respondents (47%) expect to see at least 5% annual growth in the IT workforce over that period -- even as the pool of experienced and qualified IT workers in many countries gets smaller.

"Even in the midst of hiring freezes and layoffs, organizations continue to face talent shortages in critical areas such as IT," said Jeff Schwartz, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "We believe differentiation is key when trying to attract, develop and retain top IT talent. This means organizations will need to revitalize their efforts and focus on areas such as company brand, workforce flexibility, multi-generation workforce strategies, job rotations, virtual management skills, improved on-boarding and accelerated development."

Deloitte offers additional recommendations for organizations to consider as they address current and future IT talent challenges:

* Establish clear roles and responsibilities. CIOs and their management teams need to own and lead the IT talent challenge. However, HR/talent functional leaders and teams have significant opportunities to improve their strategic partnership with IT by improving their capabilities and focusing on services that address the unique talent needs of the IT function.

* Improve workforce analysis and planning capabilities. Leverage internal and external data to provide clearer views of long-term talent trends, both in terms of supply (e.g., demographics, baby boomer retirements -- and longer time to retirement, education, and global labor markets) and demand (e.g., new business requirements and technology advances).

* Refine global sourcing strategies. Explore innovative ways to manage a diverse, global workforce that is increasingly comprised of non-traditional resources, including contractors, outsourcing vendors, retirees and offshore staff.

* Strengthen alignment between IT and business priorities. Rotate people from IT into the business and from the business into IT. In an environment with significant outsourcing and global dispersion of IT workforces, these rotation programs are even more important because building and managing relationships with business units is one of the retained IT team's primary responsibilities.

* Learn how to manage a multi-sourced, global workforce. Without an improved approach to sourcing and managing a global workforce, global sourcing can be more of a hindrance than a help and organizations can end up in challenging situations where sourced employees are performing roles that could be staffed internally and the sourced labor costs are higher than they should be.

* Pay more attention to on-boarding. In particular, companies should focus more effort on on-boarding for contractors and other non-traditional resources. Current processes are generally designed to meet the needs of traditional in-house staff. That, however, is not what the IT workforce looks like any more.

For a full copy of this research report and for the latest information about talent strategies, innovative talent and work solutions, please visit Deloitte's Talent Management website. The Deloitte Review also recently published a detailed article on retaining key talent as the economy improves. The article entitled, "Where did our employees go? Examining the rise in voluntary turnover during economic recoveries," can be found in Issue 5 at www.deloittereview.com.

About the Survey

Deloitte, in collaboration with CIO, conducted a global survey of 306 IT decision-makers and executive business managers at companies with revenues of $500 million or more. Additional insights were obtained through personal interviews with selected respondents.

The U.S. version of the survey was completed among qualified members of the CIO audience. The Canadian, European, and Asia-Pacific versions of the survey were completed among an international panel of IT and business professionals. In addition, Deloitte conducted the survey among select companies in South Africa. The survey was conducted between March 17, 2009 and April 1, 2009.

About Deloitte

As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte Services LP, subsidiaries of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--For Dell Inc. (DELL), trying to become a one-stop technology shop comes at a hefty price.

The world's second-largest computer maker paid a steep premium to acquire Perot Systems Corp. (PER), especially when compared to Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HPQ) similar acquisition of Electronic Data Systems last year. But Dell needed a big move into information-technology services to keep pace with H-P and other rivals as computer profits dwindle. Perot Systems' position in two still-strong markets - health care and government - makes the company a particularly felicitous purchase.

Round Rock, Texas-based Dell will pay $3.9 billion, or $30 ...

ANDOVER, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As part of their efforts to improve the effectiveness of both security and clinical workflows in the healthcare delivery process, Sentillion, whose identity and access management (IAM) solutions are the most widely implemented in healthcare, today announced their participation in the “Steering Committee on Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics” Healthcare Information Technology Showcase on Thursday, September 24th on Capitol Hill. The Technology Showcase is part of the activities of “National Health IT Week” going on September 21st – 25th in Washington DC.

The all-day event will bring key public and private healthcare constituents representing the full spectrum of healthcare interests together to elevate national attention to the necessity of health IT adoption and to raise awareness among members of Congress of the pivotal role it can play in transforming the nation’s health system.

Sentillion, whose identity and access management solutions are the most widely adopted in healthcare, with over 1,000 hospitals and 400,000 caregivers using its solutions daily, will be demonstrating how organizations including Duke University Medical Center, Sharp HealthCare, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, Texas Children’s Hospital, and The Methodist Hospital System are securing electronic health records (EHRs) and protecting patient data while also making it easier and faster for physicians and nurses to use EHRs and access patient information.

“Since our company’s inception, Sentillion has been dedicated to improving the effectiveness of privacy and security measures within a hospital environment through the adoption and utilization of identity and access management technologies,” said Paul Roscoe, president of Sentillion. “With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we believe the nation’s healthcare IT delivery system is about to transform dramatically over the next several years, which is why we have made a commitment to participate in the “Steering Committee on Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics” Healthcare Information Technology Showcase and to collaborate with policymakers and government officials in an effort to reach the ultimate goal of creating a secure digital patient healthcare record system.”

The “Steering Committee on Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics” is focused on developing legislative priorities and awareness related to telehealth, e-Health and healthcare informatics. Honorary Steering Committee Co-chairs are: Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND); Mike Crapo (R-ID); John Thune (R-SD); Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Representatives Eric Cantor (R-VA); Rick Boucher (D-VA); Bart Gordon (D-TN); Allyson Y. Schwartz (D-PA); and David Wu (D-OR). The Steering Committee coordinates many activities with the U.S. House of Representatives’ 21st Century Health Care Caucus, co-chaired by Reps. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), and is supported by more than 20 major organizations in the healthcare and health information technology (HIT) communities, including trade associations, government agencies, universities and corporations.

About Sentillion

Since 1998, Sentillion has been revolutionizing healthcare IT with award winning, industry recognized identity and access management technology. Sentillion has successfully combined patented technology with a deep understanding of the healthcare industry to deliver the most comprehensive set of solutions for single sign-on, identity management, clinical workstations and desktop virtualization. Recognized as the number one single sign-on (SSO) vendor in the KLAS Top 20: 2008 Year-End Report, Sentillion is the only identity and access management company whose solutions are used daily by over 400,000 caregivers in leading healthcare organizations across North America and Europe. Sentillion is a privately held company headquartered in Andover, Mass. For more information, visit Sentillion at www.sentillion.com.

A study from the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology has found that most microbloggers are updating their status with "mundane" messages.

Curiously, the Finnish institute chose to examine the also-ran microblogging platform Jaiku. In sifting through 400,000 messages on Jaiku, HIIT found that the most common messages users send out include the words "working," "home," "work," "lunch," and "sleeping."

"Microblogging works because of the total control users have over their postings, but it is a hobby that seems to require a significant investment of time which many cannot afford," the Institute said in a statement.

Jaiku is now a shadow of its former self, some two years after it was acquired by Google. According to the site's About page, it's "maintained by volunteer Google engineers on their spare time," after the Web giant decided at the start of the year that a half-dozen products including Jaiku, Dodgeball, and Google Video weren't contributing to its brand or bottom line. In March, the service was moved to Google's App Engine. The company also open sourced its code base, putting the future of the service "in developer hands."

As valuable as the Institute's finding might be to Jaiku users, Twitter is the dominating force in the microblogging space. The Institute didn't analyze tweets, making the study less applicable to the entire population of microblog users.

That said, earlier this year the Oxford University Press studied 1.5 million tweets to see which words were found most frequently on the popular service. Aside from obvious words like "the," "it," "and," and "to," the organization found that "work", one of the top words on Jaiku, is also a top term on Twitter. It was included in over 26,000 tweets the organization analyzed and was one of the most-used terms on the site. One of the least-used terms Oxford found in its study was "running." It was included in just 3,195 of the 1.5 million tweets it researched.

The study from the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology will be available in an upcoming issue of the Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Journal.

Benefits Include Improved Availability, System Performance and Rapid Software
Deployment
NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(Business Wire)--
TMW Systems, the largest developer and integrator of transportation management
software for the trucking industry, today announced the launch of TMW Managed
Services, a new service offering designed to help companies in transportation
services to reduce IT infrastructure investments, ensure scalability and
optimize scarce resources. TMW Managed Services offers enterprise-class
application hosting and systems management to reduce the complexity of software
implementations and project startups, improve application availability,
reliability and scalability, and lower the capital cost of major software
implementations.

As a leading software development and solutions delivery company, TMW Systems
already deploys comprehensive hosting services to fully manage back-end and
customer facing operations for many of its software customers in industries such
as freight transportation, waste and municipal fleets. Today`s announcement
formalizes those services for marketing and sales purposes.

"Transportation service providers are re-examining core competencies and looking
for ways to further reduce information technology costs in already lean
organizations, while maintaining their competitiveness," said Scott Vanselous,
vice president and general manager at TMW. "TMW Managed Services provides
enterprise-class application hosting and management services at an affordable
monthly fee." Vanselous stated that with TMW`s fully managed hosting services,
the total costs are both more visible and more manageable through
clearly-defined service arrangements.

Managed services are ideal for organizations that want to deploy new
applications quickly, without managing the hurdles of hardware procurement,
infrastructure upgrades, or IT staff expansion, all while aligning with
corporate IT department policies. They can also provide business continuity
assurance and co-location capabilities.

"One advantage of working with TMW Managed Services is access to our unmatched
transportation services industry knowledge. Our engineers are highly certified
and experienced and our consulting services can align with corporate IT policies
and growth expectations," Vanselous said. "We offer a very cost-effective
alternative to maintaining mission-critical software applications with in-house
IT resources." he added.

About TMW Systems

TMW Systems, Inc., is committed to delivering customer-driven solutions that
help companies in the transportation services sector seize market opportunities
while improving profitability and gaining a better return on information. TMW
customers include 3PLs and shippers, private and for-hire trucking, brokerage,
construction, ready-mix concrete, municipal fleet, heavy-duty repair and waste
management operations. With offices in Cleveland, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina.;
Indianapolis, Indiana; Dallas, Texas; and Vancouver, British Columbia; TMW
currently serves more than 1,600 customers managing over 325,000 power units and
maintaining more than 1.1 million assets worldwide, including North America,
Europe, China and Latin America. For more information, visit www.tmwsystems.com
or call (800) 401-6682.

Release Summary:

TMW Systems launches TMW Managed Services, a new service offering designed to
help companies in transportation services to reduce IT infrastructure
investments, ensure scalability and optimize scarce resources.

Keyword Tags:

hosting services, it infrastructure, software, technology, tmw managed services,
tmw systems, transportation, trucking



TMW Systems, Inc.
Monica Truelsch, 216-831-6606
mtruelsch@tmwsystems.com