BUSINESS IN BRIEF

Revenue at Accenture, formerly known as Andersen Consulting, reached $10.3 billion for the year ended Dec. 31, 2000, a 10 percent increase over 1999 results and a 14 percent increase excluding the effects of currency translations.

Accenture's Products global market unit achieved the highest growth rate of the firm's five global market units, increasing its revenue by 21 percent to $2.1 billion. Communications & High Tech, the firm's largest global market unit, reported revenue of $3 billion, an 18 percent increase over 1999. Revenue for the Financial Services and Government global market units increased 3 percent each, to $2.7 billion and $811 million, respectively. Revenue for the Resources global market unit remained relatively unchanged, at $1.7 billion.Affiliated Computer Services announced a strategic alliance with Recourse Technologies Inc., a provider of threat management solutions. ACS is an expert in information assurance IT solutions. Under the alliance, ACS will recommend and deploy Recourse products ManTrap and ManHunt as part of the ACS Information Assurance solutions.

ACS' Information Assurance offering is supported and delivered by Web security experts at ACS Defense Inc. ACS was selected by the Defense Information Systems Agency as one of the prime contractors for a multiyear IT Capabilities contract called I-Assure. This multiple-award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract will provide information assurance services and solutions to federal government agencies worldwide.Boeing plans to move its headquarters from Seattle to a central U.S. location closer to customers and Wall Street. Boeing said it is eyeing Chicago, Denver, and the Dallas/Fort Worth area, saying it would make a final decision by early summer and have a new headquarters by fall.

The new site will employ about half the 1,000 people working in the Seattle offices, Boeing said. Its huge manufacturing plants will remain in the Seattle area.

Boeing, which employs 200,000 people worldwide and 80,000 in Washington state, said the move would help it restructure, creating a leaner, more flexible company with greater focus on its military, space and communications and financing units.Digital Signature Trust announced it has won a contract to integrate digital signatures in two electronic grant pilot projects for the National Institutes of Health, Office of Extramural Research. With this award, issued under the General Services Administration's Access Certificates for Electronic Services contract, Digital Signature Trust will help NIH develop approaches to enable electronic grant administration processes by performing two key tasks.

First, it will assist NIH to electronically create, distribute and sign forms within its committee management system, which is used to generate slates of outside scientists to review and score grant applications. Second, Digital Signature Trust will enable the research community to submit and sign a pilot NIH grant application electronically via the Internet by creating a system that supports online registration, identity proofing, digital certificate issuance, digital signing, certificate validation and certificate renewal and revocation.Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. announced it awarded Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems Inc., a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, a $446 million subcontract for the warfare system for the CVN 77, the Navy's next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

Newport News said it worked with Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics and Surveillance-Surface Systems under an advance planning contract. The warfare system will be delivered as part of Newport News Shipbuilding's $3.8 billion contract from the Navy for the CVN 77, signed in January. The award to Lockheed includes a $40 million option for exterior communications equipment.

Also, the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command Center in San Diego awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin for fixed surveillance systems and integrated undersea surveillance systems (IUSS) engineering services.After losing several military enterprise resource planning contracts during the past year, PeopleSoft emerged victorious as the armed services' choice for a standard human resources system. The Naval Sea Systems Command awarded a $6.5 million contract to PeopleSoft to deliver a version of its human resources enterprise application for the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System by March 2002, the Pentagon announced.

These business briefs are composed of selected excerpts from the BB&T Capital Markets publication, "A&D/B2G/B2E/G2C Weekly Review," written by Thomas Meagher.