BUSINESS IN BRIEF

Hansen of Sacramento, Calif., announced that Santa Monica, Calif., has selected the company's asset management solution for its utilities division.

The new system will be used to manage the operation and maintenance of the city's water and waste-water networks and the customer service operations for the division.

The solution includes software licensing, project management, data conversion and training. The city's new system will be used by 60 employees in the utilities division and will allow them to manage work activities and track customer calls from initial contact to resolution of a problem.

The system also will preserve the long-term integrity of public works infrastructure, public safety, plan review and public health. The new system also will be used to support the city's established geographic information system database.Harris of Melbourne, Fla., has been awarded a seven-year, $300 million contract by the Air Force Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., for the Ground Multi-band Terminal (GMT) program.

The next-generation Satcom terminal, accessing both commercial and military satellites, will provide military commanders with improved command, control and communications capabilities critical to supporting the full spectrum of U.S. military operations worldwide.

Under terms of the GMT contract, Harris is responsible for program management, system development, integration, production and logistics support for up to 200 ground terminals.

GMT offers greater reliability than the previous generation of terminals as well as six times the communications capacity, or throughput. The terminals are designed to be modular and configurable for various missions, including humanitarian, disaster relief and regional conflicts.

Work on the GMT program will be performed by engineers and technicians at Harris' Palm Bay, Fla., facility. Harris expects to hire additional employees for the GMT program as it builds momentum.NIC Commerce of Reston, Va., an e-government procurement subsidiary of National Information Consortium, laid off almost 30 workers last week, or about 40 percent of its work force.

The move was part of a staff reduction across most of NIC. The NIC Commerce layoffs mostly occurred in administration and new business development, though there were some reductions in all departments.

NIC Commerce is concentrating on its "big-three" contracts: an electronic term contract catalog system for South Carolina, an e-procurement system for Colorado and Utah, and a Web-based purchasing system for the Houston-Galveston, Texas, Area Council.
In the wake of joint sales activities springing from a December 2000 Simplexis-IBM Corp. preferred provider agreement, the Mentor Village Exempted School District in Ohio has inked a multiyear licensing agreement for the best-in-class Simplexis SimpleBuy eProcurement suite.

Under the Simplexis-IBM agreement, the two companies work hand-in-hand to deliver hosted e-procurement software and systems services to schools across the nation.

Mentor has also retained IBM to integrate SimpleBuy with its existing financial management system. Specialists with San Francisco-based Simplexis will work with IBM on systems integration.

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