He said that broadband access is the "critical infrastructure challenge of our generation." The FCC is in charge of creating a plan by February 2010 to make broadband service available nationwide. The plan will use federal stimulus money, which includes $7 billion in federal grants for broadband access.
Did you know that approximately 10 years ago less than 3% of U.S. households had access to broadband? Today it is estimated that nearly 90% of U.S. households have access to broadband.
Fundamentally this means expectations are rapidly rising for instant access to information and services via the Web. The implications for your company are that if your systems are not ready to support these expectations, you may be at risk of losing your customers to your competition.
The primary justification the FCC chairman wants to spend $7 billion of taxpayers’ money is to "create jobs, help small businesses, and make the United States more competitive."
Do you have a plan in place to modernize your applications in 2010 to make your company more competitive? If not, it is time to build one and get going. Economic data show that the global financial crisis is flattening out and in some parts of the world growth is already underway. As broadband access expands, the demand for instant access to information and services will continue to rise and competition will grow in its ferocity.
Contact us today and we can help you compete more effectively.
For more information on our Application Modernization and Outsourcing solutions, please go to Application Modernization and Outsourcing or contact Jeff.Irby@unisys.com.
http://www.unisys.com/pebble/amos/2009/12/02/1259790881811.html
IT 2.0: Next Generation of Managed Services http://www.unisys.com/pebble/NextGenManagedServices/ - In the last decade, you've witnessed many changes within your enterprise IT organization, and perhaps the most radical transformation sweeping the technology landscape and enterprise IT is the consumerization of IT. Unisys blogger Sam Gross shares his thoughts on this and other trends and topics that are shaping the next generation of managed services in your enterprise.
Application Modernization and Outsourcing http://www.unisys.com/pebble/amos - As we emerge from the global economic crisis, the “always available,” high-bandwidth needs of the modern consumer are going mainstream. It is increasingly important for private and public organizations to modernize their applications in order to compete and provide better service to their customers and citizens. Unisys blogger Jeff Irby and other thought leaders invite discussion on application modernization and outsourcing that is relevant to your industry, organization and location.
The New Interaction Paradigm
Consumerization of IT isn’t about devices or computing platforms. It’s about enabling social interactions. But current hardware-centric IT strategies aren’t suited to supporting this emerging paradigm and capturing the true business value it generates.
It is challenges such as these that technology managers should be anticipating and preparing for now to make the most of the new human interaction paradigm that consumerization of IT is driving.
http://blog.unisys.com/2010/07/23/the-new-interaction-paradigm/
Capitalizing on the Fourth Wave of Productivity
There’s a revolution taking place in IT.
The revolution is spearheaded by workers who are investing their own resources to buy, learn, and use a broad range of popular consumer technologies and application tools to get things done in the workplace.
These consumer technologies and tools are bringing down the old artificial barriers around the workplace. At work and at home and everywhere in between, tech-savvy workers and consumers are using the same powerful, widely available tools and applications – from smartphones and iPads to social networks and instant messaging - to stay informed, connected and productive in their professional as well as their personal lives. Add to that the changing usage demands of an always-on environment with anytime/anywhere access fundamentally changing support and service requirements.
This “Consumer-Powered IT” trend is already turning traditional IT models on their head. It’s a powerful new way to work that, in our view at Unisys, will transform organizations over the next three to five years and usher in the fourth wave of business productivity. And yet most organizations are woefully unprepared to capitalize on this powerful movement.
A recent Unisys study, conducted by IDC, exposes a troubling gap between the activities and expectations of new generations of “iWorkers” and their employers’ readiness to manage, secure, and support this movement—and capitalize on it. Capitalizing on it means; boosting productivity with news ways of connecting and sharing, staying competitive as an innovative company and workplace, and delivering IT flexibly while managing security.
Younger iWorkers are not demanding change—they are driving it through consensus usage motivated by mobility and interconnectedness. While iWorkers are intimately familiar and facile with technology, they have little understanding of the security risks, management issues, and policy and governance implications that arise from mass introduction of consumer devices and applications into the workplace.
Organizations, meanwhile, are still largely operating in the standardized, command-and-control IT models of the past. Those models are very good at managing risks and costs, but they prevent the typical organization from navigating the swift waters of breakthrough thinking and innovation being unleashed by the fourth wave of productivity.
To harness the full power of this new wave of productivity, organizations need to modernize their IT environments in order to:
* Manage and support these popular consumer technologies;
* Secure critical data and assets against hackers, viruses, identity thieves, and other widespread consumer IT threats;
* Offer the interactive “app” experiences that consumers are looking for when transacting with their suppliers;
* Handle the expected four-fold increase in transaction load that these new interactive experiences will impose on the IT infrastructure;
* Attract and retain the new generation of workers entering the workforce.
For organizations that embrace and capitalize on the wave of innovation being unleashed by this consumer-powered IT, the leverage is enormous - in terms of organizational flexibility, a more engaged and productive workforce, the ability to leapfrog established competitors, and, yes, even achieve cost avoidance.
Quote
Consumerization is a stable neologism that describes the trend for new information technology to emerge first in the consumer market and then spread into business organizations, resulting in the convergence of the IT and consumer electronics industries, and a shift in IT innovation from large businesses to the home. For example, many people now find that their home based IT equipment and services are both more capable and less expensive than what is provided in their workplace. The term, consumerization, was first popularized by Douglas Neal and John Taylor of CSC's Leading Edge Forum in 2001 and is one of the key drivers of the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 movements.
Jackson Stephens
http://www.nationalcorruptionindex.org/pages/profile.php?profile_id=283
Last Updated: December 05, 2008
Jackson Stephens exemplified the requisites for an unstoppable self-made billionaire. Visionary, charismatic, and intrepid pathfinder for those in power seeking, like himself, greater wealth and influence as sole moral imperatives.
He reached the status of global-power broker nearly a half century before his death in 2005 at the age of 83. His impact, however lives on, in the government insider firms run by his son Warren, and in weakened US security from the covert deals he arranged between US Presidents and foreign despots.
As head of the largest investment bank off Wall Street, he increased the personal wealth of three eagerly compromised Presidents, in exchange for nuclear and information control technologies.
From a small farm in Little Rock, Arkansas, Stephens joined his brother’s investment company in 1947, after graduating the Naval Academy with classmates Jimmy Carter and future CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
Successful ventures in energy, finance and media parlayed into mega scores, when he arranged the underwriting of Wal-Mart in 1970, then funded Tyson Food’s takeover of Holly Farms.
Along the way he covered his bets, as a financial problem solver for national politicians of both parties.
In the ‘80s, he was Arkansas Governor Clinton’s go-to fundraiser. In return, Stephens’ firm handle 70% of all Arkansas public-works bond issues.
He teamed up with China-born billionaire Mochtar Riady, who, along with his son James, would later be convicted of secretly funding Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns with $ millions from the Chinese government.
During those same years, equal opportunist Stephens also arranged Mideast bankers’ multi $million bailouts for George W. Bush’s failing oil ventures.
Stephens’ firm, Systematics, secured a US beach-head for the infamous Bank of Commerce and Credit International. Before its $20 billion collapse in 1991, BCCI laundered money for dictators, terrorists, drug lords and illicit operations of intelligence agencies, including the CIA (most notably the Iran-Contra guns/cash/drugs transactions).
The effort started in the late ‘70s. Stephens brought Bert Lance, President Jimmy Carter’s soon indicted former budget director, together with BCCI principals including Agha Hasan Abedi, Ghaith Pharoan and Khalid Mahfouz (all later criminally charged as well). After 9/11, they and many of their Arabian banking colleagues were directly linked to, or themselves named Specifically Designated Global Terror financiers
After years of complex scheming to circumvent regulatory hurdles, Stephens’ and Lance’s labors paid off. BCCI gained entry into the US banking system and its safeguard systems, through clandestine control of Financial General Bankshares (FGB), a major DC-based banking institution.
At the same time, the BCCI tycoons bought Lance’s interest in FGB subsidiary National Bank of Georgia, from which he had loaned himself and Jimmy Carter several $million. BCCI set up “consultant “ contracts and new terms for the loans’ repayment, along with millions more donated to Carter’s chosen charities.
Stephens’ BCCI incursion, and his other ventures were represented by Hillary Clinton and her Arkansas law firm partners Vince Foster (later White House Counsel before death by reported suicide), and Webster Hubbell (later #3 in the US Justice Department before serving 20 months on multiple fraud convictions).
While Clinton was Arkansas Governor, Stephens’ billionaire buddies, the Riadys, bonded with Bill and Hillary through their global conglomerate (and Chinese government partner), the Lippo Group. James Riady moved to Little Rock to be closer to his new friends.
In 1983, the Riadys launched their first business venture in Arkansas: The Lippo Finance & Investment Inc. The following year, Lippo ,and everyone’s friend Jackson Stephens partnered to buy control of Arkansas’ Worthen Bank Corp. In 1991, a $2.5 million Worthen loan (never repaid), would rescue Clinton’s Presidential campaign.
Hillary and her law partners naturally handled Worthen, and other China-partnered Lippo matters as well.
In 1985, Worthen Bank was indicted for extending several million dollars' worth of illegal, preferential loans to companies owned by the Riadys and Stephens.
A fire of “unknown causes” broke out in the bank at 3am, destroying all the records sought by the prosecutors. Worthen and another Lippo-China bank were given “cease and desist” orders from making such “dangerous loans” in the future. The criminal case was settled, and the loans to Stephens and the Riadys were never repaid.
In 1987, Stephens’ ecumenical spirit helped arrange a $25 million bailout of George W. Bush’s floundering oil venture, Harken Energy, through his very same BCCI buddies, in partnership with the Union Bank of Switzerland.
Stephens gave $100,000 to the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980, another $100,000 to the Bush dinner committee in 1990, and was a Bush Ranger (minimum $200, 000) for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
But through the first half of the ‘90s, Stephens, and his China-tied Lippo partners’ favorite recipient was Bill Clinton. Stephens was Clinton’s 2nd biggest contributor over his political career.
Toward the end of his first term, over fierce Congressional and Defense Department objections, Clinton ended major restrictions against military technology transfers to China. The US-China trade imbalance grew enormously, and Chinese nuclear weapon espionage, as documented in Congressional reports, grew rampant.
This while Clinton’s re-election campaign received $ millions, which were later traced back to foreign sources, mainly China.
In 1993, Clinton appointed Lippo Sr.VP John Huang as Assistant Deputy Secretary of the US Commerce Department. With only a perfunctory background check, Huang was given Top Security clearance, actually approved five months before he took office. Congressional probes later revealed that while installed at Commerce, Assistant Deputy Secretary Huang spent most afternoons at Stephens’ corporate offices, and was in constant contact with the Lippo Group, as well as with Chinese government officials.
Stephens’ Systematics, meanwhile, reportedly utilized a cutting edge computer program named PROMIS, secretly equipped with “back door control” ability, in IT management contracts with banks across the country. Systematics merged with telecom giant Alltel just before Clinton’s Presidency. Stephens data mining company, Acxiom, continued rolling in “sensitive” government contracts through the Clinton and George W administrations. Acxiom was the aggregator of US citizens’ private information for the Bush Defense Department’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, headed by John Poindexter, convicted of conspiracy in the ‘80s Iran/Contra scheme. In a 2005 government contract, Acxiom, along with Alltel/Systematics’ major vendor Qsent, and Choicepoint (which falsely disqualified tens of thousands of Florida Democrats in the 2000 Presidential election), merged extensive private information about 100 million US citizens. They illegally gave the data to the TSA, which then transferred it to IBM. The TSA explained it all as an unfortunate series of mistakes.
*** Note – In 1997, IBM joined with a small new firm named Ptech, to create the “Unified Modeling Language” UML as the common parlance for integrated software coding.
Ptech, though known by FBI Bin Laden Unit Chief (later whistleblower) Robert Wright to be headed by a major Al Qaeda financier, and funded by Stephens’ former BCCI colleagues, was placed in charge of software management at every critical US Government agency- Defense, State, Justice, Energy, Transportation, the White House itself.
Ptech and a quasi government entity named MITRE, utilized PROMIS software to create the FAA’s National Airspace System, in control of operations on 911.
Stephens’ Acxiom Board of Directors reflected his cultivated Democratic Party dealings. The Board included former Clinton Chief of Staff “Mack” McClarty, former NATO Commander(and one time Democratic candidate) Wesley Clark and former Lippo Sr Exec Stephen Patterson.
When the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, both Alltel and Acxiom joined in formation to unfurl their primary team colors.
Within the same week in ‘07, each was acquired by TPG/Newbridge Capital, co-chaired by US Senator Diane Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum.
Senator Feinstein (D-Ca) is in perfect position to be of service. She is Chair of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, and member of the Appropriations Subcommittees for Defense and Intelligence.
The awful legacy of Jackson Stephens’ spectral empire, now controlled by his son Warren, seems secure.
Sources
biz.yahoo.com/ap/070524/alltel_buyout_stephens.html?.v=1
Alltel, Axicom deals: www.famoustexans.com/georgewbush.htm
Bush campaign contributions: www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/1997/01/davis.html?welcome=true
Connections to Clinton, Huang, Riady: www.aci.net/kalliste/lippo.htm
Systematics: www.freerepublic.com/forum/a37d95a0809ce.htm
Riady, Clinton, Bush, BCCI: www.politicalfriendster.com/showConnection.php?id1=128&id2=2474< /a>
Political contributions, Harken: www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1992/09/bushboys.html
H arken, BCCI: www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2005/07/24/News/324873.html
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