Stories about: United Technologies

Given all the pressures IT is under, another compliance initiative may seem to be one too many. There is such a mandate: to submit financial reports using XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) tags. How much will the XBRL mandate add to IT's burden? At first, the burden will be small, but it will increase over time -- as will the opportunity to use XBRL for better internal operations, not just for reporting compliance.

Diebold, the parent company of e-voting systems vendor Premier Election Solutions, is in the crosshairs of a hostile acquisition attempt by conglomerate United Technologies (UTC). In an announcement, UTC said it is making an offer for Diebold because it would tie in well with its existing businesses.

Australian president of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) Mike Shove, is leaving his post in Sydney after being promoted president of the company's Asia group.

Forget the consumer PC business. Dell Computer generates most of its dollars from enterprise hardware. Following Dell's launch of an Itanium 2 processor-based server, Kevin McKean and Mark Jones interviewed company Chairman and CEO Michael Dell about his enterprise ambitions.

At last, we are starting to see shareholders with backbone and more than a modicum of common sense. Recently, Hewlett-Packard Co. shareholders passed a nonbinding recommendation asking the company's directors to obtain stockholder approval of large executive severance packages. HP's management, which had lobbied hard against the proposal, issued a terse statement saying that it would "duly consider" the recommendation.

US-based manufacturing giant United Technologies Corporation has signed a $255 million ($US143 million) deal to extend its outsourcing agreement with CSC to include its operations in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and China.

Looks like it'll be a long, hot (northern) summer at least when it comes to politics and open-source software. A fortnight ago, Ralph Nader sent a letter to the White House suggesting that the government use its purchasing power to keep Microsoft Corp. in line by adopting open-source software. That was just after a Microsoft-funded think tank, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, announced the publication of a white paper arguing that the government shouldn't use open-source software because it would pose a national security risk.

Three years before its current contract is to expire, Xerox Corp. announced that it is extending its outsourcing contract with Electronic Data Systems Corp. another five years, until 2009. The value of the extension is US$1.5 billion.

A major, public, business-to-business trading exchange for the airline industry promised via the combined efforts of AirNewco and MyAircraft has come to fruition with the formation of Cordiem, officials announced Wednesday.

reeMarkets Inc. (FMKT) is making its move into supply-chain management. The undisputed king of online business-to-business auctions revealed Thursday that it has signed a definitive agreement to buy Adexa Inc., a Los Angeles-based provider of supply-chain software, for about US$340 million in stock.

Consolidation among business-to-business marketplaces reached new heights Thursday when two ventures backed by major airlines and large airplane-parts manufacturers announced plans to merge.