Mr. Chambers Goes to Washington

Mr. Chambers Goes to Washington

CDW Computer Centers Inc., Vernon Hills, Ill., has formed a subsidiary to sell computer products to government agencies, schools and universities.

William Shafley, a former vice president of marketing at GTSI in Chantilly, Va., has been named vice president of sales for CDW Government Inc. Its headquarters will be at an existing sales office in Chantilly, Va.

Though CDW, a publicly traded company with sales of $1.3 billion in 1997, has been selling to government and education markets for 14 years, this is the first time the company has dedicated a division to the market.

Microsoft's Next Move?

While the tempest of the Justice Department investigation surrounds Microsoft, the software giant is focusing on the future of the enterprise.

The PC model is not innovative enough to take the company to the next stage of growth, top Microsoft officials told reporters during recent briefings in Redmond, Wash.

What will? High-volume workstations and servers, high-volume applications and highly competitive and innovative products. Microsoft executives are chanting the mantra, "Businesses don't buy products; they buy solutions."

That translates into creating value environments and promoting key initiatives, like digital nervous system (infrastructure and line-of-business applications), the Web lifestyle (live, learn, leisure and e-commerce) and maximum return on IT investment (scalable, interoperable, available and manageable).

Road Runner Zips Into Town

Road Runner, the cable Internet provider owned by Time Warner, MediaOne Group, Microsoft and Compaq Computer, is moving its headquarters from Stamford, Conn., to Herndon, Va.

For starters, the company, named after Time Warner's speedy cartoon character, will move 70 employees to the Washington region, with plans of tripling its presence in the next year.

Road Runner, which launched its first cable Internet service for the residential market two years ago this month, has more than 100,000 customers ? making it the second-largest cable Internet provider behind At Home Corp., based in Redwood City, Calif., and backed by Tele-Communications Inc., Cox Communications, Comcast Communications and Cablevision Systems.

Storm Is Brewing for L-3

New York-based L-3 Communications Corp., which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May with a $130 million offering, spent a bit of its proceeds last week.

The company bought Storm Control Systems of Herndon, Va., for an undisclosed price ? its second space-related acquisition this year.

Storm, which develops software for aerospace command and control applications, adds 150 employees to L-3's 250-person Telemetry and Instrumentation division in San Diego. No layoffs are anticipated at Storm and the business will continue to operate in Herndon, L-3 officials said.

L-3 posted pro forma revenue of $894 million last year. In February, the company bought Satellite Transmission Systems from California Microwave for $27 million. L-3 has more than 6,000 employees.

SAIC Raises the Roof

With its Washington area offices bursting at the seams, Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego has decided to put up a new building to house an additional 800 employees.

The new building will be added to SAIC's McLean, Va., complex and should open in December 1999. In the past year, SAIC has hired another 600 employees in the D.C. area, bringing its Washington contingent to 9,700.

CA Buy Builds Notes Practice

Computer Associates International Inc. of Islandia, N.Y., added another piece to its software offerings with the recent acquisition of Qxcom Inc. of Agoura Hills, Calif., a developer of Lotus Notes/Domino solutions.

Terms of the Sept. 2 deal were not disclosed. Computer Associates also would not reveal how much revenue Qxcom will add to CA.

"The amount of revenue is insignificant to CA," said Marc Sokol, CA senior vice president of advanced technology. "We feel their products have been undersold."

The acquisition of Qxcom, which has less than 100 employees, will complement Computer Associates' recent purchase of RealLogic of Cleveland, Sokol said. Part of RealLogic's consulting practice focuses on Lotus Notes implementations.

FOIA Filing Stirs Emotions

An as-yet-unnamed individual filed a FOIA request Aug. 5 for the 30,000 e-mail addresses of subscribers to the FinanceNet listserv. Since then, e-mail has poured onto the list requesting removal of subscriber names.

List owner Benjamin Preston Rich informed listserv members that, indeed, the individual who made the request was, according to NSF's FOIA officer "entitled to receive all those addresses within domains such as *.gov, *.mil, *.us, *.edu and any corporately owned domains. The FOIA office stance is that only e-mail addresses within private ISP domains such as *.net, AOL, netcom, etc. are exempted from the FOIA request by privacy act considerations."

What it all amounts to is that about 10 percent, or 3,000, e-mail addresses would be released to the FOIA filer.

Leslie Crawford, NSF general counsel and FOIA officer, said there are nine exemptions under which e-mail addresses would not be released. You can find them all and more about the Freedom of Information Act at the U.S. Department of Justice Web site, www.usdoj.gov/oip.

"Our judgment of what was releasable fell under Exemption B6 of the FOIA, protection of personal information," said Crawford. "Our premise is that the records collected belong to the public and should be available unless there is a reason to withhold them."

Gayla Sessoms, FOIA Initiative coordinator at the U.S. Department of Justice, confirmed that each agency handles FOIA requests as they deem proper.

"Our role is to offer guidance to other federal agencies. There is no one general policy. The [Department of Justice] is the lead agency on FOIA implementation. Each agency's records system determines how they should administer the FOIA," noted Sessoms.

? John Makulowich