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Deloitte &Touche has
reported an 8.2% fall in consulting revenues
to $256 million for the six months to November
2003. Overall, the professional services
firm more than doubled its pre-tax profit
to $304 million, in part due to a $124 million
charge in last year’s comparable period
for buying Andersen’s UK operations and
partly through bringing in over 3,000 staff
from Andersen. Total revenue in the half-
year rose 3.9% to $1 billion.
A consortium led by IBM
and including BAE Systems, Computacenter,
Steria, ntl and Echelon has been dropped
from the race for a $7 billion Ministry
of Defence contract to create a single integrated
IT infrastructure for MoD locations worldwide.Surviving
IBM on the shortlist are three consortia:
Atlas, comprising EDS, Fujitsu, Cogent,
General Dynamics and LogicaCMG; Radii, comprising
CSC, BT, Cap Gemini Ernst &Young and Thales
UK; and a consortium led by Lockheed Martin,
including Deloitte’s consulting arm, Hewlett-Packard,
Qinetiq, SAIC and Unisys. The three remaining
bidders for the 10-year Defence Information
Infrastructure – or Future – contract will
start negotiating with the MoD this month,
before presenting ‘best and final’ offers.
The Home Office is expected
to tender a multi-million dollar contract
to the private sector to build and run a
national identity card register The scheme
will be set out in a draft bill this year
and is likely to include building a database
to support ID cards containing biometric
details such as iris scans or fingerprints.This
part of the project is expected to cost
over $300 million, with the total cost of
the scheme running to more than $5 billion
when the Government starts to issue ID cards
in 2007.
Getronics has won a $50
million contract to refit the branch infrastructure
of Abbey National.The contract builds on
a 20-year relationship between Getronics
and the building society, and is a fillip
for Getronics as it struggles to regain
its financial footing and secure a position
in the IT services market. The contract
calls for Getronics to source and deploy
hardware and infrastructure across Abbey’s
network of 741 branches and office buildings.
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