INDUSTRY TEAMINGS
21 Apr 09. General Electric and Cisco Systems yesterday hailed a new “era of public private partnerships” that will enable companies to win a large share of the billions of dollars spent by governments around the world to stimulate their economies. The statement by two of the largest US multinationals underlines corporate America’s realisation that governments have become increasingly important customers at a time when companies and consumers have been hit by the slowdown. After launching a $200m investment in Miami’s electricity grid to be partly funded by federal grants, Jeff Immelt, GE’s chief executive, and John Chambers,
his Cisco counterpart, said companies would have to work more with governments. “This is going to be the era of more public private partnerships,” said Mr Immelt, whose strategy to focus GE on economic “mega-trends” such as healthcare and the environment has brought the conglomerate closer to governments. Mr Chambers added that companies such as GE and Cisco had been working with the public sector for years but recent efforts by governments in both the developing and the developed worlds to revitalise their economies presented a much bigger opportunity. (Source: FT.com)
20 Apr 09. Lockheed Martin and Harris Corporation have signed a collaboration agreement to develop next-generation technologies for managing and analyzing full-motion video intelligence. The two companies will use their collective expertise and resources to create new video analysis solutions for defense, intelligence and commercial customers. (Source: Yahoo!)
22 Apr 09. Following aggressive efforts to support the U.S. Navy by locating and nurturing small, innovative technology businesses, Lockheed Martin has successfully integrated a Lakota Technical Solutions, Inc. software program into the Navy’s Aegis Weapon System. The new software program, Air Tasking Attribute Correlator (ATAC), which makes it easier for the Aegis operators to monitor the movement of friendly aircraft, was evolved at Lockheed Martin’s Technology Collaboration Center, a special facility designed to help small business innovators demonstrate their technologies in a full tactical Aegis Weapon System environment. The Center enabled the Navy, Lockheed Martin and Lakota to rapidly move from a prototype capability to a robust, well-tested solution that is now part of the official Aegis baseline. As a result, the ATAC was recently installed in the guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) as part of the Navy’s Cruiser Modernization Program. ATAC performs an automatic correlation of the planned mission flight data in the Air Tasking Orders and Airspace Control Orders with actual flight activity tracked by the ship’s sensors. This correlation enables specific aircraft-related mission data to be accessible throughout the combat system thereby increasing the situational awareness of each operator. Prior to Lockheed Martin’s incorporation of the functionality provided by ATAC, operators performed a series of manual steps to add information from paper copies of the Air Tasking Orders to the system in order to coordinate the movement and actions of friendly aircraft.