IT supplier groups in the US are up in arms over a proposed law that would annul their outsourcing contracts with government bodies if cost-savings targets are not met.
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IT supplier groups in the US are up in arms over a proposed law that would annul their outsourcing contracts with government bodies if cost-savings targets are not met.
Sir Richard Branson’s People’s Lottery bid is facing problems with its technology partner, Automated Wagering International (AWI), as it tries to persuade the lottery regulator that it can take over from Camelot in October 2001. AWI faces similar legal and technical questions to Camelot’s partner, GTech, and has been criticised in the US over its failure to deliver software.
Max Landsberg
HarperCollins Business, £14.99
Rating: 5/5
Online purchasing at large organisations in the US is increasing, according to quarterly figures from the Institute for Supply Management and Forrester Research. In the fourth quarter of 2001, companies bought 9.5 per cent of indirect materials and 7.1 per cent of direct materials on the net.
In the wake of Ford and General Motor's decision to merge their fledgling supply chain portals, Elizabeth Bellamy asks: what happened to competitive advantage?
The European Commission has proposed that all European Union countries must recycle 55-70 per cent of their packaging by 2006. But the commission’s recommendations carry no legal compulsion for firms to be responsible for the recycling of the packaging they produce.
Hunter Davies
HarperCollins, £14.99
Rating: 4/5
UK software firm CI Solutions has acquired the global patent for electronic data interchange (EDI) documents to be sent over an open network. The global market for EDI, the standard technology used to send information and complete transactions securely online, is worth an estimated £47 billion. Tens of thousands of firms use the technology, said CI’s managing director, Jonathan Palmer.
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has outsourced its IT to IBM for £1.2 billion, one of the drugs industry’s largest IT contracts. The 45-country deal includes PC desktop support, helpdesk services, intranet, e-mail and servers. Notably, activities to remain in-house are production and research information. Around 1,200 IBM employees could be transferred.