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rach: Absolutely correct! Although Wave may be hidden within the TCG structure in terms of publicity, the revenue will speak volumes in relation to the importance of Wave's role (technical components) within the TCG. Exciting times indeed!
Awk: It's nice to see the technical validation of what you and a (very) few others knew YEARS ago. Thanks for sharing. Again. Jeff
Many thanks again unclever!
Now that post will have me laughing into the weekend! Too damn funny dude!
Barge: Awk has had some pretty aggresive posts lately?! I have to say I like it alot! Hope it continues? Let her rip Awk!
Nice find cosign!
Diebold opens new office in Sterling, VA for govt security sales and sevice
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/new-office-marks-diebolds-commitment-to/n20060510174209990027
Diebold is also uniquely positioned to deliver a solution that meets the HSPD-12 (Homeland Security Presidential Directive).
http://www.military-information-technology.com/article.cfm?DocID=1400
The following organizations are founding members of FiXs: BearingPoint, Data Systems Analysts, EDS, Lockheed Martin, NACHA-The Electronic Payments Association, Northrop Grumman, Saflink, SRA International, SRP Consulting Group, 3Factor, Unlimited New Dimensions and Wave Systems
“FiXs modeled the operating rules a great deal after how the financial networks are handling automatic teller machine transactions under the auspices of NACHA. One bank must trust another bank’s customer in dispensing money from an ATM,” explained Mestrovich.
"Diebold is a global leader in providing physical and electronic security systems, facility transaction products and automated teller machines (ATMs), providing total systems solutions to financial, government, retail and commercial markets. Over the past decade, Diebold has been the primary supplier for all of the country's federal reserve banks, which includes seven bank sites and more than 20 very large vault doors."
The Dutton rep was a tard! He should stick to reading his pre-written questions and accepting the answers as they are provided by Steven in the future.
Ramsey: I completely agree. Steven was excellent today with his opening remarks. I also liked the way he handled the first question out of the gates. He's always been upbeat and positive on these calls over the years but the confidence behind his enthusiasm is obvious. I think the dude is giggling inside now and will be laughing his arse off all the way to bank in the near future.
Barge: I heard there was a viiv platform installed on those particular stone turning units?! Rumor has it the Crane and the Saw also have viiv platforms? The cool thing about it is Wave makes them all interoperable! The crane operator can attest that the stone turning operator is actually who he claims to be and is operating the unit he is supposed to be operating and visa versa! Amazing!
I hear you. I belong to the slow stone turning group as well. Good luck!
Tampa: Nice post. I have always appreciated your honesty and sincere candor. It was a sweet funding PR wasn't it?! Jeff
Awesome!
That was pretty funny Greg... Gotta give you that one dude. Take it easy. Jeff
AWK: I feel I have a solid grasp of the scale of this space. What I dont have is a grasp of how damn rich i'm going to be next year! The convergence of the key technologies begining 2007 dictate to me that it is OVA! Thanks for your prediction. I'm looking forward to it's reality. We deserve that reality!
iblevhim! But he is stepping out of his own box tonight! Your right. There might be some foreign chicken involved here?!
AWK: Your starting to sound like Barge dude? I like it!
No Sunday night blues tonight AWK! Staggering numbers to say the least!
Terrific find Mundo!! Wave up in running in the Chinese market!
Oustanding post! I learned a few things! Thank you!
He wont do that because i'm pretty sure he'll go with option two before option one! Isn't that what a true Wavoid would do?
Posted by: awk
In reply to: wavxmaster who wrote msg# 118861 Date:4/28/2006 5:42:29 PM
Post #of 118871
wavxmaster: The order of business is...
1. Write report on Ihub
2. Have cocktails, get stoned...
...the other way around may cause the report of too rosy a picture...
Now that was damn funny!
Wow!!! Nice find!
CPA: Maybe a kaboom announcement from Levitra, I mean Levono, will help them get it up?
go: Just messing with you this morning! I realize this isnt a PR. I do get your point and appreciate the reality checks once in awhile. Jeff
http://www.zdnetindia.com/news/commentary/stories/107309.html
The enterprise service bus--a ride you shouldn't miss
David Berlind, Special to ZDNet India,
July 30, 2004
Talk BackE-mailPrint
Unless you've been hiding under a rock for a few years, then you should know by now that the IT industry is in the throes of an integration revolution.
It's no secret that one imperative for achieving maximum enterprise productivity is to remove the people who serve as the glue between the various systems involved in your business processes and replace them with technology--integration technology that works not just between the systems behind your firewall, but also with the systems outside the firewall such as those of your partners, suppliers, and customers.
For years, the integration technology has existed, but it has largely come in the form of hard-wiring and at an intolerable cost of ownership. A tiny upgrade to one end-point could result in a cavalcade of projects just to bring all of the other related systems in line. Eventually, half-acknowledging one of the biggest pain points of their customers and half-hoping to build the bridge over which they could take each other's customers, IBM and Microsoft aggressively pursued a way to integrate dissimilar middleware technologies and applications, such as IBM's Java-based WebSphere and Microsoft's .Net.
The result has been a blitzkrieg of abstracting APIs--collectively known as Web services--that can replace most, if not all, of that hard-wiring with an XML-based lingua franca that all systems can understand. Ultimately, if all systems speak the same language, one of an enterprise's biggest cost centers can be driven way down.
As the APIs evolved, grass-roots organized Web services plug-fests became the proving ground for showing how any software component could easily talk to any other software. Development tools such as Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net have evolved to not only produce service-oriented software, but to take existing software and, with relatively few steps, wrap it in an XML-ready, services-oriented layer. Inside, it was still the same old software, but on the outside, it looked like a Web service.
For those ready to embrace the idea, another issue remains. Just because you can get discreet software components and systems talking directly to each other doesn't mean you should. For transactional systems engaging in millions of transactions a day--transactions of different types and priorities that need to integrate with different systems--it's not as simple as just spitting those transactions out onto a TCP/IP network as fast as you can and crossing your fingers. Nor is it as simple as just turning the receiving system's ear to the network and hanging an "Open for XML requests" sign on the window. You can do both, but, depending on your situation, it could be an invitation to mayhem. Imagine thousands of unruly people storming the turnstiles at a soccer match. The aftermath isn't pretty. TCP/IP as a network simply doesn't have enough built-in facilities for managing the integrity of business-critical transactions that need to take place according to priority in a reliable, secure, and often a choreographed fashion.
As it turns out, taming such mayhem has nothing to do with XML or Web services. To the extent that people have been integrating systems for over a decade, usually via proprietary methods, it's been an issue that integrators have been dealing with, regardless of the data or networking protocols. To bring order to chaos, the answer has invariably been the insertion of message queues as a layer of abstraction between integrated systems.
Although the metaphor is a bit of an oversimplification, message queues such as IBM's WebSphereMQ do for integration what orderly queues do for getting spectators safely in and out of a soccer match, worrying about issues such as guaranteed delivery that protocols such as TCP and UDP can't map to the transactions that are taking place at a fairly high layer in the protocol stack.
In the spirit of cost reduction, message queues also have another benefit. In typical intermediary fashion, message queues allow the host systems (to which the queues are adjacent) to focus on spitting out transactions while the queue is the proxy that worries about the business logic of what to do with them, such as prioritization and routing. From an ongoing maintenance point of view, such separation of duties reduces the complexity of having the transaction logic intermingled with business logic. The generally accepted rule of TCO is "less complexity, less cost."
But with nothing but message queues (and the systems they abstract), the potential for mayhem and complexity still exists. At the very least, directly connecting message queues to one another still represents a form of hardwiring that could benefit from some additional abstraction. For example, in order to connect message queues directly to other systems or message queues means that the queue might have to be reprogrammed every time systems get moved, changed, or replaced. If there are only two nodes in your integration matrix, as there might have been in the days where integration was so difficult that you wouldn't fathom manually wiring more than a couple of systems, this is no big deal.
As integration became more commonplace and more nodes were thrown into the mix, however, it became clear that the message queue didn't need the additional responsibility of connectivity. It's one thing to integrate, and it's another to make sure the entire system scales well. Distracting the host systems or the message queues with tasks that can be taken on by something else runs the risk of gumming up the works.
When a single transaction in your point-of-sale system results in interactions with your inventory system (is the product in stock?), your credit card processing service (is the card valid?), your ledger, your CRM system (do we have updated customer information?), and your shipper (multiple drop ship?), the last thing you want your message queue to have to worry about is where all those things are. Especially since, for whatever reasons, you might have other point-of-sale systems for other lines of business interacting with the same services. Rather than maintain all that connectivity data in the queues, one better way to do it is to maintain the routing information in a central location that can serve as yet another layer of abstraction.
Peter Linkin, senior director of product marketing for BEA's WebLogic put it to me this way: "What was needed was a system that just told us what the message was, what the contents were, where it should go, and what the quality of service for it should be. Then, that was handed off to the next level which is something like a central post office. The postmaster says "send me all your messages from all these outpoints, and I will intermediate. I'll make sure they get sent individually, and reliably to all the end points." It's a message broker that's driven by business process. The end points don't have to know about each other so there's ignorance at each end and the logic of the business process is in the plumbing."
If two point-of-sales systems need to reach your CRM system as a part of their business process, the message gets packaged and ready for sending to the CRM system, but no particular destination is specified. When that message pops off the top of the queue and reaches a broker that's like the equivalent of a central post office, the postmaster says, "Oh, I know where the CRM system is" and then ensures that the message is reliably delivered according to the prescribed quality of service.
The beauty of this broker-like design is that it operates very much like the Internet's DNS. If for example, you decide to switch your CRM system from Siebel to Salesforce.com, you don't have to reprogram all your queues. You just reprogram the central directory to say "the CRM system is over there."
Although the overall architecture has evolved to have more primary parts (the transactional system, the message queue, the central post office), the distribution of responsibility results in less complexity, as well as less cost from a maintenance perspective. It also allows components of the workflow logic to be moved to where they can be most efficient. For example if some customer data is sent to your CRM system and other customer data is sent to another one, the brokering logic that makes that decision can be put in central router rather than in the message queues.
In transactional systems, where a high number of systems that have to be touched after one infinitesimal change, not only are the number of touch points reduced (which drives down the maintenance costs), the system can perform better since each of the discreet parts gets to hone in on their core competencies without the distractions of problems that other parts are better suited to work on.
Another benefit of this infrastructure framework is that it introduces a level of fault tolerance into the system. If the primary CRM system has failed or isn't responding, the central post office will not only detect the fault, but know where to re-route the traffic. In a very small way, this reliability aspect is one reason that services-oriented architectures (SOAs) are being associated with concepts like utility and on-demand computing.
Enterprise Service Bus
In some circles, the architecture being described here is called an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Scott Cosby, program director for IBM's WebSphere, cautions that there is no single definition of an ESB. "Each customer is likely to create their ESB in a unique way," Cosby told me. "The most important thing to remember when considering the definition of an ESB is that flexibility is key. There's no fixed way to build one. As long as you have a connectivity layer that optimizes information distribution between service requestors and service providers, one that can respond to event, message, or service-oriented contexts, then it's safe to say what you have fits the description."
As a reminder though, Cosby says there's really nothing new about this arrangement. It's a well known approach--one that application server vendors like IBM and BEA have included in their offerings for quite some time. Where this architecture really starts to take on the characteristics of a bus, much like the bus inside a computer into which adapter cards of various types can be plugged because they're all in agreement with an interconnect technology like PCI, is where standards get introduced. Reflecting on the legacy ESBs in place, Cosby pointed out that 80 percent of the business transactions taking place today are done over EDI. For this reason, Cosby warns against ESB definitions that fail to acknowledge what's already in place. That said, Cosby agrees that XML and Web services are great ESB enablers.
As most people know by know, protocols like XML and SOAP (the building blocks of Web services) have significantly greased the wheels of integration by giving systems that must interoperate with each other something they can agree to--a mutual understanding of how to read the data, instructions, and service invocations that each system is putting into its message queues. By doing this, XML-based Web services removed yet another factor of hard-wiring from the old school ways of integration. Before, that mutual understanding had to be programmed somewhere into the logic, and the methods were largely proprietary.
Once Web services came on the scene, everything changed. Not only was there a standard language over which systems could interoperate, but the desire to get systems interoperating is on the rise because the obstacles are diminishing. But, as more systems get tossed into the integration fray, the load on the overall architecture increases and, if any one part ends up overloaded, it might not be long before the cracks start to show.
Keep in mind the downside of adding more gears to the mix. If one of those gears falls out of synch, then the rest could end up waiting. The system is not unlike that of a car's engine. An engine's peak performance depends on the precise timing between the process that opens the valves that let the air-fuel mixture into the engine's cylinders, the compression of that air-fuel mixture by the piston that hopefully is on its way towards the top of the cylinder, and then generation of the spark that ignites the compressed air-fuel mixture (the resulting combustion of which pushes the piston back down through the cylinder so as to turn the crankshaft and, ultimately, the wheels of the car). If, in your car, any one component of that process starts to experience a problem, or gets ahead of the others, the engine sputters when you hit the gas pedal.
Between the need for good performance of real-time processes, the requirement of well-timed components, and the increased interest in integration, there are still opportunities to break down the interoperations. While Web services gives systems a common language with which to hold their discussions, there still isn't a lot of agreement over the structure of the data being passed back and forth (known as the XML schema) or the vocabulary. The SAP ERP system may be Web services compliant, but its schema for customer data may be very different than that of the Siebel CRM systems to which the data might be sent. For example, what fields are being tracked for each customer, what are the exact names of those fields, and how long are they?
When two or more systems have different native treatments for what is ultimately the same data, those differences have to be resolved somewhere before they can interoperate. But where should this translation take place? In the application or transaction logic? In the message queue? In the central post office?
The answer, according IBM's Cosby, is basically any of the above. Given the state of legacy systems where this transformation takes place, the ideal solution will be highly situational. At the same time, if you notice that saddling any one of those components with the responsibility of transformation is causing the engine to sputter, you still have options that conform to the notion of an ESB.
For example, why not have a single, common data format to which all interoperating nodes must resolve, and then give each system access to that format through a transformation adapter. This approach where you have software adapters that help adapt the native data coming from each of the endpoints to a common data format where it can move about the "bus" through brokers until it finally comes in contact with another adapter on another system that in turn takes care of the "outbound translation," suggests BEA's Linkin, is clearly in the spirit of an ESB.
Both BEA's Linkin and IBM's Cosby agree that as with any other bus-oriented systems, a management layer is needed. Linkin describes this as a layer that's charged with housing a directory of the services that are available on the bus around which policies can be set and security can be applied.
If you haven't taken a ride on the Enterprise Service Bus yet, perhaps now is the time to check it out.
barge: This run has to be over anticipated news (Intel)or new money?!
Thanks CM!
wavxmaster: Right?! By the way... you have been a good boy this year and deserve some good news on Monday! I feel the same way but if not tomorrow then as weets says: "it will come" or "it has come" and "it will keep coming". This is the year!
go: Your probably right but the following point makes me wonder:
- The quote said (for what it's worth) "Intel plans to unveil that third brand name Monday along with technology that is supposed to make it easier to manage and secure business PCs."
AMT (Active Management Technology) was "unveiled" last year and is currently detailed on Intels website? What's there to unveil in your opinion?
Also:
http://www.intel.com/technology/manage/iamt/
A major barrier to greater IT efficiency has been removed by Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT). Using built-in platform capabilities and popular third-party management and security applications, Intel Active Management Technology allows IT to better Discover, Heal, and Protect their networked computing assets. Here's how:
Discover: Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT) stores hardware & software information in non-volatile memory. With built-in manageability, Intel AMT allows IT to discover the assets, even while PCs are powered off**. With Intel® AMT, remote consoles do not rely on local software agents, helping to avoid accidental data loss.
Heal: Intel AMT's built-in manageability provides out-of-band management capabilities to allow IT to remotely heal systems after OS failures. Alerting & event logging help IT detect problems quickly to reduce downtime.
Protect: Intel AMT featuring Circuit Breaker capability protects your network from threats at the source by proactively blocking incoming threats, reactively containing infected clients before they impact the network, and proactively alerting IT when critical software agents are removed. Intel AMT also helps to protect your network by making it easier to keep software and virus protection consistent and up-to-date across the enterprise. Third party software can store version numbers or policy data in non-volatile memory for off-hours retrieval or updates.
Intel® Virtualization Technology1
Intel® Virtualization Technology enables a single platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions, functioning as multiple “virtual” systems. This technology can help support legacy applications critical to business or applications that must be supported on multiple operating systems simultaneously. Intel® Virtualization Technology can also enhance management and security of systems by providing a dedicated environment for IT services. This "embedded IT appliance" can, through third-party software, provide services outside the user's main operating system, such as endpoint access control, firewall services, or inventory management. The embedded IT appliance, by working independently of the user's operating system, can make management software less susceptible to intentional or unintentional tampering. Intel® Virtualization Technology includes hardware support, which improves the robustness and performance of today’s software-only solutions. For more information visit: http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/?iid=search&
What do you think this third party software is? I know i'm stretching here but any insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Jeff
24601: I understand where your coming from. The sweet part about all this is that we're finally beginning to see the fruit of the 2003 Intel announcement. It's all good! Jeff
Looking good Vader! Sweet post! Jeff
Your correct. So do you believe Intel is rolling out Averil which "is the biggest leap forward for us in end-user capabilities and capabilities for the IT manager that we've seen in five years," Crooke said" And not provide the capabilities to backup and recover keys??? Jeff
Are you sure? "ultimately the companies with the tools necessary to do remote management, to provide the ability to backup and recover keys.."
weets: My cup runneth over this morning! Nice DD and your absolutely right "It has come!". Thanks Carl! Jeff
Orda: Almost all of us here placed our bets on Wave at some point in time with a little knowledge and alot of hope. On a relative scale... Hope for some of us has transcended into knowledge over the years. Our knowledge continues to be validated every day trusted computing moves forward. This knowledge transcends into wisdom again on a relative scale depending on our past experiences etc.
I typically experience little suprise with this investment but the validation has been a terrific ride. I have a tight circle of friends who have approached me over the years and have asked about this stock. All of them are heavily invested now. Their hope is transcending into knowledge and wisdom on a relative scale just like mine has. Keep in mind the EFFORT to understand coupled with INTELLIGENCE determines the extent of knowledge and wisom. The DD shared over the years has merely provided them with an OPPORTUNITY to gain knowledge in relation to the trusted computing paradigm that has developed and Waves role in that paradigm. Simply, without the DD we would all remain with a hope and a "true" knowledge based on facts would not exist. Therefore, wisdom would not exist which I find will be crucial when determining when to cash some of my Wave shares out over the years! LOL
I believe we should all show respect and gratitude for the many who provide the DD. Thank you for the contributions you've made over the years. It's a great time for Wave and is sizing up to be a great time for Wavoids soon IMO. I'm off the soap box now! Jeff
barge: I still can't imagine another Christmas passing us by without this mind blowing technology being marketed!! I have to tell you this investment HAS been the longest "strip tease" act of all time! I have enjoyed every minute of it! Every dollar bill i've put in Wave's panties has been worth it! The lap dance is fast approaching and it's going to be good!
Orda: What a find dude!! Nice!!
Helpful: RATHER IMPORTANT to say the least!! Your the man! Awesome find!
LMAO! Now that was funny! Thanks for the laugh...
barge: Too bad the sleeve is covering the pocket. I'm pretty sure you would find the intials "SKS" embroidered.
Barge: Memories...
Posted by: barge
In reply to: Whitewash who wrote msg# 74756 Date:3/23/2005 7:02:18 PM
Post #of 117373
Whitewash--A Slashdot TCG basher AGREES with us! A consensus of THREE must mean we're on to something! Right? lol!
"Cisco's Business Ready Data Center Initiative press release [cisco.com] says:
Cisco is collaborating with industry-leading technology, system integration and support partners including EDS, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, to enable integrated solutions to be offered to joint customers. Collaboration efforts will include sharing of best practices, alignment of architectures
Alignment of architectures - that would be the new Trusted Computing architecture.
And they are working with EDS, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft were four of the five Trusted Computing Group's founding members. But who the hell is EDS? Why they have been selected To Operate Root Key Certificate Authority [wave.com] for Trusted Computing. That's a press release from Wave Systems, another member of the Trusted Computing Group. Teir EMBASSY system was the Trusted Computing system before it was named Trusted Computing."
Posted by: Whitewash
In reply to: barge who wrote msg# 74730 Date:3/23/2005 4:45:45 PM
Post #of 117373
Barge: I know we're thinking on the same level here... I just read the following article this morning in Business Week. I like the political aspect of this article and how much this alliance means to EDS. Jeff
http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_09/b3922099_mz068.htm
EDS Turbocharges Its Teamwork
Tight partnerships with a slew of tech biggies just might give it a shot at revival
Investors who tuned into Electronic Data Systems Corp.'s (EDS ) fourth-quarter earnings call on Feb. 7 didn't hear a lot to cheer about. Sales and free cash flow at the troubled technology-services giant had fallen from the year before. New contract signings were way below expectations. Worse, the company offered a bleak outlook for 2005, with sales flat to down 3%. The next day shares of EDS sank 6%, to $20.05. Advertisement
But there was one bright spot. After three years of putting out fires, the Plano (Tex.) company finally unveiled a plan to revive growth. The centerpiece: $1 billion in spending in 2005 to expand its service offerings, upgrade its technology, and beef up partnerships with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ) and other tech leaders. That includes $420 million EDS is plunking down in a joint venture with human-resources consultant Towers Perrin that will let corporations outsource their human-resources departments. This marks the first time Chief Executive Michael H. Jordan has backed up his vision for growth with an investment plan, a move some analysts think will improve EDS' competitiveness. "They need to spend," says analyst Cindy Shaw of Moors & Cabot Capital Markets. "They're coming from behind."
Way behind. EDS has failed to increase sales in the past three years amid intensifying competition from giants such as IBM (IBM ) and low-cost rivals in India. Winning new business has been particularly tough since EDS' financial woes have scared off prospective clients. EDS' new-contract signings were up 13% last year, to $14.9 billion, but that's well below the 25% goal it had set a year ago.
Making matters worse, EDS may soon lose its grip on its largest client. General Motors Corp. (GM ), which accounts for 9.5% of EDS sales, is renegotiating its decade-old outsourcing deal this year, and analysts say EDS could lose as much as two-thirds of its $2 billion in annual fees from GM. A GM spokesman declined to comment. Jordan says that estimate is far too high but concedes that "we have a lot to prove."
Jordan may have more to prove than most. The former chairman and CEO of CBS (VIA ) came out of retirement two years ago to turn around the ailing company founded by the legendary Ross Perot. Jordan has little to show for his efforts so far, and the $1 billion investment plan may be his last best shot. If it doesn't work, says analyst Gregory Smith of Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER ), EDS may enter a "downward spiral" from which it won't be able to recover.
The plan does look like a solid step toward improving EDS' finances. Wall Street expects net income to rise 88% this year, to $297 million, as revenues slip 2%, to $20.1 billion. That's mainly because of cost-cutting and lower losses from problem contracts, such as a cash-draining outsourcing deal with the U.S. Navy. Next year, as Jordan's investments begin to generate higher margins from existing contracts and deals with new customers, analysts think net income will jump an additional 53%, to $453 million. "It's taken a lot longer than we would have liked, but we've got a lot of confidence" EDS can rebound, says Clint A. Opperman, research director for Wisconsin Capital Management, which owns 2.1 million EDS shares.
Jordan is counting on more than a little help from his friends. He has a novel idea to sell EDS as the leader of a federation dubbed the Agility Alliance. The group features 10 key partners that have strengthened their ties to EDS since Jordan took over, including Cisco Systems (CSCO ), Dell (DELL ), Microsoft, and Oracle. (ORCL ) They have vowed to help EDS design new services in joint development labs, give it previews of future products, and lend their clout by jointly pursuing key contracts. An example: Storage giant EMC Corp. (EMC ) is working with EDS to develop a service to help customers manage their sprawling storage networks. "Our past alliances were meeting for a drink at a bar," says Jordan. "This is settling down, sharing an apartment."
EDS also is showing a new level of commitment. In the past it installed hardware and software from rivals such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ ) if that's what customers chose. Now, EDS is encouraging customers to switch to its alliance partners' products, though it will support rivals' systems if customers demand it. Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW ) and EMC stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in hardware sales if EDS clients switch from IBM and HP.
EDS' plan is about more than sales and marketing. Its tech staff is now teaming more closely with partners. At Microsoft's partner-development lab in Redmond, Wash., EDS' 50-person unit is the largest of any company's. Jordan meets with CEO Steven A. Ballmer once a quarter. "They are treating us like their own software house," says Simon Witts, vice-president for Microsoft's enterprise and partner group.
EDS is betting that the same collaborative mind-set will juice its fortunes in business process outsourcing (BPO), one of the hottest segments of tech services. The $3 billion human-resources outsourcing market it is targeting with Towers Perrin is expected to grow 21% annually through 2007 and offers higher margins than traditional computer outsourcing. EDS will own 85% of the new firm and consolidate its roughly $600 million in annual revenue. EDS plans to invest $100 million more this year to set up ventures with other partners to move into the outsourcing of finance, accounting, and procurement. Jordan's goal: double the revenues EDS gets from BPO, from $2.7 billion now, over three to four years.
SIMPLE STRATEGY
Rivals scoff at Jordan's initiative. IBM and Accenture Ltd. (ACN ) have been investing heavily in the BPO market for years and have built up loads of expertise. IBM, for one, jumped into human-resources outsourcing two years ago and cut a 10-year deal with Procter & Gamble Co. (PG ) that helped it develop advanced technology for payroll, benefits, and other services. IBM says its combination of hardware, software, and research prowess makes it a stronger partner than EDS. "They don't have the same capabilities we have," says Laurie Tropiano, a vice-president at IBM.
Still, Jordan's strategy appeals to tech buyers' hunger for simplicity and lower costs. Take paper giant Weyerhaeuser Co. (WY ) Thanks to EDS' alliance strategy, the company plans to hire EDS to integrate its software, consolidate storage, and deploy Net phone systems. "Bringing all of that together in one place is going to greatly help us," says John Lorentzen, Weyerhaeuser's director for enterprise systems.
One customer a turnaround does not make. Yet Jordan's approach is resonating with some partners, too. When EDS stopped bidding on a contract for auto maker DaimlerChrysler (DCX ), a big Sun customer, Sun CEO Scott G. McNealy personally helped bring EDS back to the table. And last year, EDS plucked the deal from Big Blue. "The last thing we want to see is IBM win," says McNealy. For EDS, the enemies of its enemy are now its most important friends.
By Andrew Park in Plano, Tex., with Jay Greene in Seattle