BUSINESS NEWS IN BRIEF

Harris and BAE Systems Inc. won a $2.5 million contract from the Air Force for the risk-reduction phase of a system that provides a high-bandwidth, air-to-air and surface-to-air, digital data link to transmit and receive command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data between airborne platforms and ground- and ship-based terminals.

The focus of the effort is to reduce the size, weight and power of the system and integrate it with the Army's system. Successful risk-reduction efforts could result in flight-testing of a system in early 2002.

The Harris/BAE System link is capable of transmitting over distances greater than 200 kilometers at a rate of 10.71 megabits per second, providing deployed military commanders with near real-time reconnaissance data for enhanced battlefield awareness.Inktomi has signed agreements to provide its search technology to a variety of new federal customers.

The Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory, the Federal Communications Commission, the Library of
Congress, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture all signed on to use Inktomi's software.

The company's information-retrieval platform enables government workers, contractors and the public to retrieve relevant information contained anywhere across intranets, extranets and public sites. Financial terms and the signing dates of the deals were not disclosed, but the agencies are all new customers for Inktomi.The Energy Department's Office of Declassification awarded a contract to Soza for computer automation support services to assist with the migration from a standalone system to a local-area network environment.

Soza will provide technical, analytical, data entry and administrative services, including hardware and software tools, related to advanced automation planning, organizational work-flow analysis and evaluation of current and leading-edge computer technology.

These business briefs are composed of selected excerpts from the BB&T Capital Markets publication, "Aerospace/Defense/Government IT Services Weekly Review," written by Thomas Meagher.