Channel News

By Nick Wakeman

Corel Corp. of Ottawa signed a pact with the U.S. Justice Department to supply software to 55,000 employees. The value of the three-year contract was not disclosed.

Corel will supply WordPerfect Office 2000, voice recognition software Dragon Naturally Speaking and WordPerfect Law Office 2000.

Corel is still embroiled in a legal battle with the U.S. Labor Department over that agency's decision to award a sole-source contract to Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., to supply $8 million of office desktop software. In June, Corel won a $6.8 million lawsuit against the Canadian government because that government awarded a contract for 300,000 users to Microsoft. Corel said the contract was unfairly awarded to Microsoft.American Computer Systems, a subsidiary of International Internet Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla., has signed a reseller pact with Citrix Systems Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. American Computer Systems provides hardware, system engineering, product design, software integration and networking communications services to the federal government.

Citrix provides application server software and services that allow organizations to run virtually any application via the Internet.

Under the agreement, American Computer Systems will become a Silver Solutions Provider of Citrix products.

"The opportunities that are now presented to ACS through our new relationship with Citrix are limitless," said Neal Cohen, president of American Computer Systems.SilverStream Software Inc. of Burlington, Mass., will supply software and support services to American Management Systems Inc. of Fairfax, Va., under a partnership signed by the two companies.

SilverStream develops software for servers that allow applications to run on the World Wide Web. AMS plans to work initially with SilverStream on Department of Defense agencies that use AMS products for acquisitions and procurement.

Web-enabling the AMS products should reduce the number of onsite visits for deployment of the products, increase the sharing of data and improve communications, AMS officials said.Compaq Computer Corp. of Houston and Lucent Technologies Inc. of Murray Hill, N.J., will be collaborating on 911 emergency response solutions. Lucent, through its Lucent Public Safety Systems division, and Compaq will jointly engineer and market 911 systems.

"To meet the demands of the public safety customer, we have engaged a very strong IT partner," said Bob Oliver, president and chief executive of Lucent Public Safety Systems. "Public safety products are mission critical and have to be reliable from the word go and remain that way at all times."

The Lucent Public Safety Systems "Palladium" E-911 call center and data management products are being offered on Compaq ProLiant NT servers and Deskpro hardware platform.