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And The Winner Is: The Pentagon's decision April 30 to crown the Boeing Co. the lead system integrator on a missile defense program potentially worth $5.2 billion surprised officials at United Missile Defense Co., its rival for the landmark contract.

A spiffy press package complete with a news release touting the combination of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and TRW as the winning prime contractor, along with biographies of the leaders of that United Missile Defense Co. team, were sent out late last week. There was a small caveat on the first page in the package, noting that a press briefing the morning after the announcement would be held "if" UMDC received the award.

The winning prime contractor, Boeing, opted for a lower-key approach. The company's press release went out after the big Defense Department announcement. In its news release, Boeing said work under the $1.6 billion contract would begin immediately. The three-year contract includes options for up to another seven years worth several billion more.

The heavy betting on the National Missile Defense contract had been with UMDC because of the team's long-standing missile defense work. But Boeing's work on large systems integration efforts, including the space shuttle, the Pentagon's Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft and commercial aircraft, carried the day.

Unisys, Cisco Unite On Federal Strategy: The federal systems division of Unisys Corp. has added products from Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., to Unisys' General Services Administration schedule. Unisys is one of two service providers tapped by Cisco to be a Global Support Partner, the company said.

Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys added Cisco to boost its networking services to the federal government. "This networking solution is ideal for federal agencies and departments that do not have in-house expertise or need to augment their current resources," said Everett Dyer, vice president and general manager of network/desktop practice for Unisys Federal.

Cap Gemini, Microsoft to Pursue Internet Market: Cap Gemini of Paris will create a "center of excellence" in Paris to develop Microsoft-based Internet solutions. Cap Gemini and Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. will collaborate on finding opportunities in the Internet market.

The new center of excellence will essentially provide a transfer of skills and knowledge necessary to Cap Gemini's role as a leading systems integrator in the telecom market, said Alexandre Haeffner, group vice president of Cap Gemini Telecom & Media.

NCR, Integral Solutions Enter New Phase of Partnership: NCR Corp. of Dayton, Ohio, and Integral Solutions Ltd. of Basingstoke, England, strengthened their alliance in late April when Integral Solutions said it would integrate certain features from NCR's Knowledge Discovery Workbench into the next version of ISL's Clementine data mining product.

The new data mining solution will be supported by both the NCR and ISL sales forces and professional services teams.

- Nick Wakeman

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