Stan Gibson

While there is much talk about outsourcing and services being the future of IT—and IT becoming, in effect, a service—it seems that IT outsourcing is actually not growing—depending on what statistics you look at and which you believe. TPI, a sourcing advisory company, reported that in 2005, the total value of global commercial outsourcing contracts […]

The oil portrait of a young Ross Perot is back on the wall. Buried in storage during the Dick Brown era, the picture has been dusted off and rehung outside the top executives offices at Electronic Data Systems Corp.s headquarters. The symbolism: For CEO Michael Jordan, the turnaround of his company wont be complete until […]

No turnaround at Electronic Data Systems Corp. would be possible without first clearing away the wreckage of by far the worst deal in the companys history: the Navy Marine Corps Intranet contract. Signed in 2000, the $7 billion contract for the worlds largest intranet was costing EDS $800 million annually at its low point. It […]

To listen to some people, youd think the race for technology leadership in the 21st century has already been decided. China and India have won; the United States has lost. Widely quoted numbers of annual engineering graduates support the bleak forecast. Hungry for economic development and rising personal income, India and China, we are told, […]

General Motors Corp. blessed two vendors, the Reynolds and Reynolds Company and Quorum Information Technologies Inc., as providers of management systems for its vehicle retailers. The selection of providers of its IDMS (Integrated Dealer Management System) is separate from the 40-odd deals that GM plans to announce later this month—divvying up the huge amount of […]

With a fully outsourced IT strategy, can a company gain a technological edge? Fred Killeen, acting chief technology officer of General Motors Corp., is trying to find a way. General Motors has had an outsourced IT model for twenty-one years, ever since the automotive giant acquired Electronic Data Systems Corp. to take over its IT […]

What does an IT professional wish for? Although it would have been a bit silly for veteran IT pro and president of the SHARE user group Robert Rosen to compose a list for Santa, speaking for SHARE members, he said he does have some desires that he would like to see fulfilled in the year […]

To listen to General Motors Vice President and CIO Ralph Szygenda tell it, he has changed the outsourcing industry forever. Is he exaggerating? Maybe not. In case you havent been paying attention, GMs 10-year contract with Electronic Data Systems will expire next June, and GM has spent the past two years in a vast project […]

Nerds, apparently, travel in herds. What else could explain the fact that IT has gone from being, so it seemed, the only worthwhile occupation for any human being—circa 1999, at the maximum expansion of the dot-com bubble—to a profession less popular than, say, dogcatcher, circa now. But when everyone else is caught up in a […]

Two-and-a-half years ago, General Motors Corp. unveiled to eWEEK its third generation of outsourcing—a plan in which contracts would be parceled out among different suppliers that would have to compete for the work and then cooperate in getting it done. /zimages/3/121638.jpgIn an exclusive interview here, GM CIO Ralph Szygenda said the time has come to […]

BOSTON—Electronic Data Systems is about halfway toward completing its turnaround, said EDS CEO Michael Jordan in a speech here. Jordan offered a summary of progress in the turnaround of the venerable outsourcer and systems integrator in remarks at a forum for business leaders sponsored by the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. “First, stop […]

Maybe were in the dot-com-boom echo. It seems that way, as Google and Skype soar to new heights, and Microsoft attempts to counter them with its Microsoft Live plan. In September, Salesforce. com rolled out its so-called AppExchange, an online application-sharing service. Its all about software as a service—a far-from-new concept, but one whose time […]