Brocade Convenes Federal Agencies, Partners and Luminaries to Discuss the Most Critical IT Challenges

Press release:

Brocade Convenes Federal Agencies, Partners and Luminaries to Discuss the Most Critical IT Challenges

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on diggShare on stumbleuponShare on newsvineShare on redditShare on emailShare on print

Cloud Computing, Data Center Consolidation and Alternative Acquisition Models Top Discussion Topics at the First Brocade Federal Forum

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwire - Aug 21, 2012) - Today marks the first day of the 2012 Brocade Federal Forum, which will provide an opportunity for Federal IT professionals, technology partners, systems integrators and industry luminaries to further explore and discuss key IT challenges and opportunities for the US Federal government. The two-day event is being hosted by Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD), a leading provider of innovative solutions for the world's most demanding service provider, data center and campus networks. 

The forum is designed to help Federal agencies that are facing significant IT challenges and opportunities, including new mandates to increase efficiencies, maximize existing resources, modernize infrastructure and adopt cloud computing while simultaneously eliminating redundant technologies and processes.

In response to these challenges top-level Brocade executives will share their perspectives on how the government can navigate this new era in networking and leverage the many benefits that result from the changing IT infrastructure.

Specific topics of discussion will include:

• Network transformation
• Cloud mandates
• Data center consolidation
• Evolving acquisition models

"With uncertain budgets, a CIO office focused on modernization and unfunded mandates, US Federal IT professionals are facing one of the most complex IT environments ever," said Anthony Robbins, vice president of federal sales, Brocade. "They need as much support as possible to help make the best decisions for their agency."

The objective of the 2012 Brocade Federal Forum is to extend the discussion from stated challenges to specific implementation examples, complete with common pitfalls and projected cost models. During the forum, speakers will outline state-of-the-art solutions and how they complement the legacy environments in which most Federal IT professionals currently work.

immixGroup is the Platinum Sponsor of the 2012 Brocade Federal Forum. Since 1997, immixGroup has helped hundreds of large and emerging companies grow and manage their public sector business while providing its government customers with reliable access to leading commercial technologies through the contract vehicles and partners they prefer.

Other sponsors include: Arrow, Avnet, Tech Data, Westcon, HDS, NetApp, PacStar and CDW-G.

Speakers at this forum will include:

• Ron Broersma, Chief Engineer, Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN)
• Shawn McCarthy, Government Insights Research Director, IDC
• Charles McClam, Deputy CIO, USDA
• Jason Miller, Executive Editor, WFED Federal News Radio
• Tim Schmidt, CIO, Department of Transportation
• Rick Howard, Research Director, Gartner
• Simon Szykman, CIO, Department of Commerce

Additional Resources and Forum Content

• http://brocadefederalforum.com
• Visit the Agenda page for a full list of sessions.
• Follow Brocade on Twitter at @BRCDcomm or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/brocade or join the LinkedIn Group: Brocade Federal.
• Follow the conversation at #BrocadeFederal

Social Media Tags: Brocade, Federal Forum, #BrocadeFederal, cloud computing, virtualization, data center

About BrocadeBrocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)

CGI looks south for IT expansion

Governments everywhere must automate faster to boost productivity as budget deficits are pared, and CGI Group Inc., Canada's biggest independent IT services firm, says recent U.S. acquisitions, including Stanley Inc., will pay off handsomely down the road.

CGI paid almost $1 billion in 2010 for Stanley, a big IT services firm, to expand its work with U.S. government agencies in defence, cyber-security and health care. Analysts called it "the deal we've been waiting for," but some wanted CGI to expand in the commercial sector.

"Roughly half our total revenue now comes from the U.S. and margins there are rapidly catching up with Canada's," CEO Michael Roach said after Wednesday's annual shareholders' meeting.

He said CGI has started off fiscal 2012 with $1.4 billion in new contracts, extensions and renewals, equal to 135 per cent of revenue, and an order backlog of $13.6 billion, up $578 million from a year earlier.
"The outlook is strong for the back half this year as many contracts signed last year kick in," he said, "and we're focused primarily on organic growth, debt reduction and holding the pace of share buybacks."


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/looks+south+expansion/6088279/story.html#ixzz1pVHdseaD

CGI looks south for IT expansion

Private Businesses Fight Federal Prisons for Contracts

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Private Businesses Fight Federal Prisons for Contracts

By DIANE CARDWELL

As chief financial officer of a military clothing manufacturer, Steven W. Eisen was accustomed to winning contracts to make garments for the Defense Department.

But in December, Mr. Eisen received surprising news. His company, Tennier Industries, which is in a depressed corner of Tennessee, would not receive a new $45 million contract.

Tennier lost the deal not to a private sector competitor, but to a corporation owned by the federal government, Federal Prison Industries.

Federal Prison Industries, also known as Unicor, does not have to worry much about its overhead. It uses prisoners for labor, paying them 23 cents to $1.15 an hour. Although the company is not allowed to sell to the private sector, the law generally requires federal agencies to buy its products, even if they are not the cheapest.

Mr. Eisen, who laid off about 100 workers after losing out on the new contract, said the system took sorely needed jobs from law-abiding citizens. “Our government screams, howls and yells how the rest of the world is using prisoners or slave labor to manufacture items, and here we take the items right out of the mouths of people who need it,” he said.

Although Federal Prison Industries has been around for decades, its critics are gaining more sympathy this year as jobs, competition and the role of government have become potent political issues. Recently, a clothing company complained that the government company had expressed interest in making Air Force windbreakers like one worn by the president. Last month, amid negative news reports and pressure from the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, F.P.I. said it would stop competing for the contract because it could damage the private company that makes the jackets, Ashland Sales and Service.

In addition, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is resuscitating a bill to overhaul the way the prison manufacturing company does business, proposing to eliminate its preferential status.

Under current practice — governed by intricate laws, regulations and policies — an agency must buy prisoner-made goods if the company offers an item that is comparable in price, quality and time of delivery to that of the private sector, with certain exceptions. The company’s prices are not always the lowest, but it frequently has been able to underbid private companies, Congressional aides say.

The bill seeks to limit those advantages by putting a limit on F.P.I.’s sales to the federal government, opening more product areas to private companies and strengthening requirements that the prices for prisoner-made products be competitive. The legislation would also impose federal work-safety standards and higher wages, starting at $2.50 an hour.

Seedco, New York Job Agency, Is Accused of Filing False Job Claims

Note to visitors: The Palo-Negro-Blog is no longer being actively maintained.  For more current posts, please visit:  http://JBK-BizTech.blogspot.com


Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Seedco, New York Job Agency, Is Accused of Filing False Job Claims

By MICHAEL POWELL

City investigators have discovered evidence of large-scale fraud in one of the agencies leading Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s signature initiative to find jobs for unemployed New Yorkers.

The Department of Investigation found that Seedco, a nonprofit organization that frequently works with the Bloomberg administration, falsely claimed to have helped at least 1,400 people — out of about 6,500 — find jobs; those people are in fact jobless or found employment on their own.

Seedco “developed systematic practices to report false placements” to the city’s Department of Small Business Services, according to a report on the investigation that was released on Friday.

The Department of Investigation noted that the number of fraudulent claims could be much higher, because Seedco, with permission from the city, shredded job placement documents between 2008 and February 2011.

Federal prosecutors have begun their own inquiry and have interviewed several former Seedco employees. Seedco is cooperating with that inquiry, the agency president, Barbara Dwyer Gunn, said through a spokesman.

The reports of fraud come as a blow to Mr. Bloomberg, who sought a third term based on his ability to lead the city in a tough economy and has heralded his administration’s success in finding jobs for unemployed New Yorkers.

Neither Admit Nor Deny

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Saturday, February 25, 2012

‘Neither Admit Nor Deny’ Settlements Draw Judges’ Scrutiny 

By EDWARD WYATT

WASHINGTON — The entrenched practice of allowing companies and individuals to settle federal regulatory charges without admitting that they actually did anything wrong is coming under growing scrutiny by the courts.

Two federal judges have questioned such settlements proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and this week a third judge held up a settlement offered by the Federal Trade Commission.

Judge Renee Marie Bumb of United States District Court in Camden, N.J., blocked a proposed settlement on Wednesday between the Federal Trade Commission and a marketing company based in New Jersey on charges that the company and its chief executive made false and unsubstantiated claims that the use of açaí berry-based products, which they promoted, would result in rapid and substantial weight loss.

Judge Bumb ordered both the commission and the company to justify why she should approve the proposed $11.5 million settlement when the lack of an admission by the company and the executive of any wrongdoing left her with no facts with which to judge whether the negotiated deal was fair, adequate and in the public interest.

In doing so, she cited a much-discussed case involving the S.E.C. and Citigroup. Last November, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in New York rejected a proposed $285 million settlement of securities fraud charges for the same reason: without an admission of guilt or agreed-upon facts there was no basis for an approval.

And on Friday, an S.E.C. commissioner, Luis A. Aguilar, told a group of securities lawyers that a recent attempt to tighten the agency’s policy of allowing a company to settle a fraud case while neither admitting nor denying any wrongdoing “applies in so few situations, it needs to be revised to be more useful and effective.”

While another S.E.C. case in Wisconsin, where a federal district judge in December challenged an S.E.C. settlement, was subsequently approved, the cases demonstrate that Judge Rakoff’s challenge of the “neither admit nor deny” settlement is reverberating beyond Wall Street and New York.

That is not what securities law experts expected last November, when Judge Rakoff issued the ruling.

At the time, the consensus was that the decision was unlikely to affect cases involving other regulatory agencies or in other jurisdictions.

Because the proposed settlements included a permanent injunction against further wrongdoing by the defendants, they are subject to approval from a federal judge. But Judge Rakoff argued that the judiciary should not be considered a rubber stamp to approve executive-branch enforcement cases.

Lawyers both inside and outside the S.E.C. argued that the “neither admit nor deny” settlements were perhaps the only way to get companies to settle fraud cases, because to admit wrongdoing would open them to civil damages. (Emphasis added by me.)

An appeal of Judge Rakoff’s decision by the S.E.C. is pending at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.