Wireless coverage at Florida hotel

ADC‘s InterReach Fusion in-building cellular system has been deployed to provide strong and consistent wireless coverage at the recently-renovated Fontainebleau Miami Beach resort hotel in Florida. After undergoing a three-year, $1 billion renovation and construction program, management at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach discovered that nearby cell towers were not providing adequate service throughout the facility. ADC offered the best price and performance in a multi-operator system. (David Chin, Director of IT at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach.)

$17 million BPA for TSA

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has awarded NetStar-1, Inc. a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for acquisition program management support. The five-year, multiple-award BPA has a potential value of up to $17 million. Under the terms of the BPA, NetStar-1 will provide a variety of management consulting services to TSA, including acquisition planning, documentation, program oversight support, and financial management. The overall purpose of the BPA is to support best practices in TSA’s acquisition process, permitting the agency to fulfill its mission more effectively. This effort will assist TSA to consolidate and standardize the acquisition management support process, streamlining reviews and program approvals.

Email archiving and e-discovery

Windsor Foods has deployed LiveOffice Personal Archive and LiveOffice Discovery Archive to provide unlimited storage capacity, improved server performance and e-discovery capabilities to its more than 600 users spread throughout 11 U.S. facilities. A national provider of frozen food products, Windsor Foods required a scalable email archiving and e-discovery solution to address its rapidly growing data stores, which were pushing the company’s in-house mail servers to near capacity and beginning to cause performance issues. (Windsor Foods’ Vice President of Information Technology, Stephan Henze.)

Parental notification system

As part of its commitment to enhance collaborative communication between school administrators and parents, the Archdiocese of Washington has elected to equip all 61 of its elementary schools with the automated telephone and Internet-based parental notification system developed by SchoolReach. Used by over 4,200 schools in 49 states, SchoolReach provides emergency notification and general school-to-home communications solutions to public and private schools. (Kelly Branaman, assistant superintendent.)

Digitally automating North America’s first commercial-scale renewable diesel plant

Dynamic Fuels, a 50/50 venture of Tyson Foods and Syntroleum Corporation, has awarded Emerson Process Management the contract to digitally automate North America’s first commercial-scale renewable diesel plant. With Emerson’s PlantWeb digital architecture, Dynamic Fuels will gain optimum control through the networking of thousands of Emerson smart devices, systems, and predictive maintenance software.

The $138 million facility, which is scheduled to begin operations in early 2010, will use Syntroleum’s biofuels manufacturing process – Bio-Synfining – with plans to convert animal fats and greases into 75 million gallons/year of ultra-clean, renewable diesel fuel. With some plant modifications, the Geismar facility can also produce renewable jet fuel. Renewable diesel is chemically identical to petroleum-based diesel but produces lower emissions including lower nitrogen oxide, near zero sulfur, and no aromatics (which can be carcinogenic). It also has a higher combustion quality (cetane level) than petroleum-based diesel or biodiesel and is compatible with existing fuel pipelines, storage facilities and other conventional fuel infrastructures. It can be blended with petroleum-based fuels to improve their emissions quality.

400,000 units of HP client products

HP has been selected by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to provide new HP Workstation and desktop PCs as part of its enterprise IT purchase program. This latest award builds on the more than 400,000 units of HP client products deployed by the USAF and is part of the USAF DLS (desktop, laptop and servers) Quarterly Enterprise Buy (QEB). In compliance with USAF requirements, HP will include customized security configurations that meet strict specifications and tests.

Management and treatment of delinquent accounts

BMW Financial Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of BMW AG, is to partner with Chordiant’s Cx Decision Management solution and predictive modeling capability to improve its management and treatment of delinquent accounts. BMW Financial Services will leverage the Chordiant solution to drive better risk and behavioral based actions to resolve account defaults and improve customer interactions.

BMW Group Financial Services was established in the U.S. in 1992 to support the sales and marketing efforts of BMW of North America. Since then, the group has expanded to provide service to markets in multiple countries and continues to evolve beyond its role as a captive finance unit. With more than $30 billion in serviced assets and 800,000 automotive lending customers, BMW Group Financial Services finances about half of the BMWs sold or leased in the United States. BMW Group Financial Services employs nearly 1,000 people, including consultants and temporary workers. www.bmwgroupna.com

Manage finances using mobile devices

Umpqua Bank, an $8.8 billion community bank, has selected Mobile Money from Fiserv to enable customers to manage their finances using their mobile device. Functionalities available to customers will include: balance inquiries, transaction history, account transfers, bill payments, a variety of account alerts and an ATM and branch locater. Mobile Money is a secure application that utilizes security best practices such as data encryption, along with additional risk management safeguards. (Colin Eccles, executive vice president and chief information officer, Umpqua Bank.)

Software for law firm

Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, a law firm, has launched Recommind’s MindServer Search software and Recommind’s Matters & Expertise module. MindServer Search’s Matters and Expertise module gives Davis Polk 750 attorneys and their support staff quick access to its work and its people through the automated integration of information from diverse repositories including time and billing, matter profiles and human resources. (Michael Mills, Davis Polk’s Director of Professional Services.) http://www.davispolk.com.

Macy’s customer sales data

dunnhumbyUSA, builder of sales and brand value for consumer goods and retail companies, has an expanded contractual partnership with Macy’s. Macy’s and dunnhumby initially entered into a contractual agreement in August 2008. Under the agreement, dunnhumby will continue to analyze Macy’s customer sales data, develop customer segmentation models, and work with the Macy's organization to apply the learnings, in alignment with the company’s existing customer-centric business initiatives, to accelerate future sales growth.

Hospitality Management System

The Mayo Hotel and Residences has chosen to install PAR’s ^SMS|Host Hospitality Management System. First opened in 1925, The Mayo was the preeminent hotel of its age. Newly reborn as a hotel and residence, The Mayo once again reigns as one of Tulsa’s most elegant and luxurious properties. The Mayo Hotel has selected PAR Springer-Miller’s ^SMS|Host solution for the system’s total property integration capabilities to manage both the hotel and residences from one integrated system. Using the ^SMS|Multi-Property Management module, guest and other property charges can be directly posted to a resident’s account. PAR’s EverServe 6000, the newest POS hardware platform from PAR, has been chosen for the retail and food and beverage outlets. Fully-integrated into the ^SMS|Host hospitality management system, the Mayo will utilize ^SMS|Touch Fine Dining and ^SMS|Retail Point-of-Sale in these outlets. (Wesley Ludloff, General Manager of The Mayo Hotel.)

Radiological, nuclear, environmental, disaster relief and security solutions

Safety and Ecology Corporation (SEC) a provider of specialized technology-based radiological, nuclear, environmental, disaster relief and security solutions to government and commercial customers, along with their teaming partners, have been awarded a Master Task Order Agreement (MTOA) stimulus funded contract with a maximum value potential of $100M from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The Team, including SEC’s protégé company ARS International (ARS), was awarded one of four MTOA contracts from LANL. The task orders are partially stimulus funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and contain a maximum capacity of $100M. The four awarded companies will bid competitively for a variety of Remedial Action (RA) and Decommissioning and Demolition (D&D) services at LANL Technical Area-21. According to the Weapons Complex Monitor Special Bulletin released in August, Los Alamos will receive $212M in ARRA cleanup funds, of which approximately $79M will go toward addressing more than 20 buildings/structures at TA-21.

Mission-critical infrastructure solution

Lee Technologies, a provider of mission-critical infrastructure solutions that enable commercial enterprises and government agencies to avoid disaster and mitigate risk to their technology facilities, has been selected by the Department of Defense (DoD) to design and implement a containerized power and cooling infrastructure solution for the DoD Texas facility. The project is valued at more than $3 million.

University Medical Center selects Lawson

Oklahoma State University Medical Center has selected the Lawson S3 Enterprise Financial Management and Supply Chain Management suites. These software suites will help the healthcare provider automate its business and supply inventory processes and improve efficiencies – all geared toward helping the organization reduce operating costs. (Craig McKnight, chief financial officer for Oklahoma State University Medical Center.)

GSA award estimated at $24 million

ICT Group, a provider of customer management and business process outsourcing solutions, has been awarded a competitively bid Task Order under the General Services Administration’s USA Contact vehicle, to continue its operation of the Federal Citizen Information Center’s (FCIC) National Contact Center (NCC). The task order is for one base year with four one-year options. Its estimated value is $24 million over the next five years.

USDA BPA up to $30 million

ManTech International Corporation is one of six companies awarded a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide cyber security support. The BPA has a one-year base period, four one-year options and an initial ceiling value of $30 million for all six firms. ManTech was also recently awarded its first two task orders under this BPA. The first, to provide a vulnerability assessment of several USDA applications, is valued at $41,000. The second is a four-year contract to provide computer forensic support to the Agriculture Security Operations Center valued at $1.3 million. ManTech will continue to compete to assist the USDA in implementing new cyber security measures to ensure the proactive protection and security of its networks, applications and hardware. These measures will include identifying security vulnerabilities, responding to attacks against agency resources and implementing corrective action accordingly.

USJFCOM to ensure that data is secure and readily available

Unisys has been awarded a firm fixed price, task order to support the testing and evaluation of a new encryption and “bit-splitting” technology at the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) to ensure that data is secure and readily available to those authorized to view it. The project will test the Unisys Stealth Solution for Network, an innovative secure information sharing solution for government and commercial organizations. Under the one-year task order, awarded through the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Encore II contract, Unisys will provide technical support at the USJFCOM site in Norfolk, Va., and at its subordinate Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence (JTC-I) site in Suffolk, Va. The commands will test the ability of cryptographic bit-splitting technology to help converge various Department of Defense (DoD) Global Information Grid (GIG) networks operating at different security levels into a single network infrastructure where virtualized communities of interest can co-exist, while still maintaining complete isolation from each other.