Stories about: PwC

IBM Corp. has agreed to buy the business continuity services unit of Schlumberger Ltd. in a move to shore up its global services division in Europe and help companies comply with new data protection regulations.

IBM rounded up a panel of its customers in New York Monday to help unveil results from a worldwide survey of CEO (chief executive officer) priorities conducted by its consulting group. IBM's top finding: In the Americas and most of the Asia-Pacific region, revenue growth far outpaces cost containment as CEOs' top focus, but in Japan and Europe, cutting costs remains a pressing priority.

Integration efforts remained a work in progress as IBM marked the one-year anniversary of its acquisition of Rational Software in Lexington, Massachusetts, in mid December. But the company showed signs that it's making headway.

Questions still hang over the future of IT services provider Deloitte Consulting nine months after its parent company, accounting giant Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, backtracked on plans to separate itself from the consulting unit to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has partnered with business-focused data quality management software vendor Similarity Systems to help its Australian clients increase the accuracy and reliability of enterprise-wide data assets.

Fewer than 20 per cent of Australian companies with US exposure have implemented the record retention policies necessary to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, according to Hummingbird business solutions director Alan Weintraub.

IBM's revenue increased 10 per cent year-over-year in its most recent quarter, the company said Wednesday, in a report that spotlighted growth in the company's services and software units but showed continuing softness in several of its hardware divisions.

Cybercrime and other forms of economic crime are hitting companies in all sectors of industry, but telecommunications and IT companies appear to be among the most targeted, according to a survey released Tuesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC).

On a global scale Australian enterprises are among those hardest hit by fraud attacks, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers' 2003 Global Economic Crime Survey.

IBM is in the throes of readying an all-out initiative designed to help users accelerate the implementation and management of Web services with IBM Global Services (IGS) unit serving as the focal point. The company says this results from the confluence of several industry trends that it believes will finally propel Web services into the corporate mainstream.

Financial analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers are predicting a flurry of acquisitions and mergers in the Australian technology market as market forces drag down the value of technology assets.