IBM: We're not killing OS/2

Reports of the death of IBM's OS/2 have been greatly exaggerated. Or slightly exaggerated, anyway. The confusion stems from an IBM announcement describing the pending discontinuation of 263 OS/2-based products. Some who read the withdrawal notice posted last week on IBM's Web site interpreted it to mean the end of OS/2.

But IBM insists that OS/2 isn't dead. The company will continue to sell and support OS/2 for "as long as customers want us to," says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt. "The product is still very available. We're still supporting it. Nothing has changed except elements of packaging." The items to be discontinued primarily are OS/2 packaging accessories such as documentation, Eisenstadt says. In some cases, documentation will no longer be printed, but instead will be available electronically.

In a keynote speech at last week's InfoSec conference in New York, Robert Shepherd, director of information integration in the U.S. government's newly established Department of Homeland Security, spoke about the challenge of building one IT system for 22 federal agencies and 170,000 people. "We don't want to become a case study at the business schools of how not to put together something this size," Shepherd said. The Bush administration has sketched out a road map of what it thinks is needed in IT for the Department of Homeland Security, and it includes creating a "trusted database of record" as well as projects for secure videoconferencing, Web portals and a secure Internet link.

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Reports of the death of IBM's OS/2 have been greatly exaggerated. Or slightly exaggerated, anyway. The confusion stems from an IBM announcement describing the pending discontinuation of 263 OS/2-based products. Some who read the withdrawal notice posted last week on IBM's Web site interpreted it to mean the end of OS/2.

But IBM insists that OS/2 isn't dead. The company will continue to sell and support OS/2 for "as long as customers want us to," says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt. "The product is still very available. We're still supporting it. Nothing has changed except elements of packaging." The items to be discontinued primarily are OS/2 packaging accessories such as documentation, Eisenstadt says. In some cases, documentation will no longer be printed, but instead will be available electronically.

In a keynote speech at last week's InfoSec conference in New York, Robert Shepherd, director of information integration in the U.S. government's newly established Department of Homeland Security, spoke about the challenge of building one IT system for 22 federal agencies and 170,000 people. "We don't want to become a case study at the business schools of how not to put together something this size," Shepherd said. The Bush administration has sketched out a road map of what it thinks is needed in IT for the Department of Homeland Security, and it includes creating a "trusted database of record" as well as projects for secure videoconferencing, Web portals and a secure Internet link.

21st Century Insurance Group has filed an arbitration proceeding seeking more than $100 million from Computer Sciences (CSC) over an IT project that the insurer says hasn't yielded the expected results. CSC, a provider of IT services, called last week's arbitration filing "unfounded," said it had complied with its contractual obligations, and pledged to defend itself "vigorously."

At issue is a software development project 21st Century launched in 1997 and for which it hired CSC. In an October filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 21st Century claimed it spent almost $100 million on the project and paid "most" of that money to CSC. The system still is in development and "currently supports less than 2% of the company's business," 21st Century said in the filing. Moreover, the company stated that "material components of this new system do not perform at levels necessary to support the entire operations of the company."

Nortel this week named a 10-year company veteran to head its enterprise division. Malcolm Collins, formerly Nortel's senior executive for the U.K. and northern European region, has been appointed president of Enterprise Networks. Collins replaces Frank Plastina, who left Nortel in October after the company split its Metro and Enterprise Networks division into two, creating two separate operational structures to pursue those respective markets. Collins will be responsible for all elements of Nortel's Enterprise business - including business development, products, marketing and sales. He will report directly to CEO and President Frank Dunn.