Also: AT&T Government Solutions lands huge fed deal; Nextel, Sprint rumored in merger talks; electronic payment processing passes paper counterpart; Siemens acquires Chantry.
Microsoft last week began soliciting for beta testers of a Windows Server version, code-named R2, that it plans to ship next October. The first beta will begin this month with a limited number of testers, the company says. A beta for a broader audience is scheduled to be available in the first half of next year.
The R2 Server fills the gap between Windows Server 2003 and Longhorn, due out in 2007, and will be free for customers with Software Assurance maintenance contracts. All others will have to buy a new license to get R2. The operating system will include the next version of Active Directory Application Mode and a new synchronization tool for ADAM. Active Directory Federation Services for identity management, branch-office management features and a host of new administrative tools also are included.
Microsoft already has announced that it has pulled its Network Access Protection services, used to control access to a network, from the R2 release.
AT&T Government Solutions has inked a multi-year deal with the U.S. Department of the Treasury that could be worth as much as $1 billion. The contract will span three years with seven one-year renewal options. AT&T and a team of IT vendors, including Accenture, BAE Systems and Lucent are supplying the network components to deliver an IP VPN to 1,000 locations and tens of thousands of Treasury Department employees across the country. AT&T was reluctant to say exactly what type of network services it will first deploy, stating it is working closely with the Treasury Department on a timeline for service delivery. But the service provider did say it expects to support advanced security, VoIP and video services for the department.
Nextel Communications and Sprint are in serious talks about a wireless merger, according to The Wall Street Journal. This comes less than two months after Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless closed their deal creating the largest wireless service provider in the U.S., with 46 million customers.
Nextel and Sprint represent the fifth- and third-largest wireless service providers in the country, with 15.3 million and 23.2 million customers, respectively. Verizon Wireless, the second-largest wireless service provider in the U.S., has 42 million customers. The biggest challenge with these two companies is that Nextel is still running a proprietary network based on Motorola iDEN technology. But the company is expected to announce a network upgrade by early next year that would include standards-based technology, either GSM or Code Division Multiple Access. The latter technology is used by Sprint, which announced a $3 billion upgrade for its wireless network last week.
The U.S. Federal Reserve, which spent several months studying data provided by 1,500 financial institutions and 68 payment-processing firms, last week said the total number of electronic-payment transactions reached 44.5 billion in 2003, while paper checks accounted for 36.7 billion transactions.
That compared with 30.6 electronic payments and 41.9 billion checks used in the year 2000, the last time the Federal Reserve conducted a similar study. With an average annual growth rate of 24%, debit cards were cited as the main driver in pushing electronic payments ahead of checks for the first time for non-cash payments.
Chantry Networks has become the latest wireless LAN start-up to give up trying to go it alone. Just 18 months after launching its Layer 3 WLAN switch, Chantry has agreed to be acquired by Siemens Communications, the $24 billion network equipment arm of Munich company Siemens AG. The deal is expected to be final early next year. No transaction details were revealed.
Barely two months ago, the conglomerate’s funding group, Siemens Venture Capital, contributed to a $17 million Series B funding round for Chantry, and one of its partners took a seat on the start-up’s board of directors. Siemens will adopt the Chantry BeaconWorks, a switch with companion thin access points, as the WLAN element of its HiPath product line. HiPath is aimed at enterprise customers, and is heavily oriented toward IP-based telecommunications, cellular and converged voice-data networks.
