[ISN] Tech Firms Eye Juicy Contracts

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Thu May 08 2003 - 22:51:09 PDT

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    http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,58747,00.html
    
    By Noah Shachtman 
    May 08, 2003 
    
    WASHINGTON -- The dinner bell hasn't rung yet. But technology
    companies of every breed are scrambling for a place at the trough.
    
    A $9 billion homeland security IT feast is set for the coming fiscal
    year. And after lean times gnawing on scrawny private-sector
    contracts, these firms can't wait to get their hands on new government
    fat.
    
    Pre-meal preparations are in full swing this week at the new
    Washington Convention Center, where the Armed Forces Communications
    and Electronics Association has assembled 10,000 military techies and
    defense contractors for a three-day confab.
    
    The best way to shore up the United States' defenses, they've
    collectively decreed, is to boost communications, increase information
    gathering and heighten collaboration between military and civil
    authorities.
    
    And in the center's fluorescent-lit exhibit halls, they've laid out
    hundreds of handsomely priced tools for facilitating all that talk:  
    secure cell phones, Humvee-mounted communications hubs, software for
    directing ambulances and fire trucks like so many Predator drones.
    
    Some of the executives here -- like the waxy, rumpled suits from
    Boeing and Lockheed Martin -- have long histories of handling the
    government's business and are looking to expand their ancient,
    lucrative ties.
    
    Others, like Paul Kirchoff, a tanned, crystal pendant-wearing vice
    president of Austin, Texas, software firm United Devices, are
    newcomers to the public sector.
    
    But this dot-com refugee knows money when he smells it. "There's a
    sense of urgency in the government space," Kirchoff said, slipping
    quickly into business jargon. "And an ability to monetarily support
    your business."
    
    Paul Noble, CEO of Imtech, a New Jersey-based company that makes giant
    video screens, certainly would agree.
    
    "Until a year ago, we handled mostly private business -- trading
    floors, telecom, energy trading," Noble said. "But Wall Street's on
    hiatus. Telecom is in a terrible funk. Energy trading is much
    besmirched. Most of what we do today is, loosely, homeland-security
    focused."
    
    His products are now being pitched as ideal displays for homeland
    security command centers. And with customers like the New York Fire
    Department and U.S. Strategic Command, Noble said he is expecting his
    business to triple in the coming year, to somewhere "in the modest
    eight figures."
    
    Many other contractors haven't seen the same windfall -- yet.
    
    Federal grants supposedly will enable state and local governments to
    give out gobs of homeland security cash -- but not until the fall,
    when the new fiscal year rolls around.
    
    "It's been very slow," said Eric Adolphe, whose company, Optimus,
    makes "command-and-control" software for ambulances and other
    emergency vehicles. "We've been hearing about the money coming, the
    money coming. But most jurisdictions haven't seen much money yet. And
    what they have seen is more nuts and bolts. They have had to buy
    gloves, oxygen tanks, ambulances and radios. They're not ready for IT
    yet."
    
    Local authorities in Washington, D.C., recently gave Adolphe a $1
    million order to equip 600 ambulances with the system.
    
    As for the national government, it will take time before the Homeland
    Security Department -- stitched together in March from 22 different
    federal agencies -- is ready to spend the $9 billion for homeland
    security and cyberdefense that the Bush administration has requested.
    
    "(Homeland security officials) are trying to get their acts together,"  
    said Bruce De Witte, a Northrop Grumman product manager who is
    pitching a new video surveillance software package. "Potentially,
    there's a lot of budget, but they don't know where to spend it."
    
    Making spending suggestions is what the Armed Forces Communications
    and Electronics Association was designed to do. Headed by a retired
    vice admiral, the organization was "formed after World War II to get
    the whole military-industrial complex going," spokesperson Tobey
    Jackson said.
    
    These days, that's done by bringing top operators from the boardroom
    and from the Pentagon to conferences like this one, blandly named
    TechNet International 2003.
    
    All sides are sure that communications, surveillance and information
    technologies are the keys to preventing future terror attacks. The
    feeling has only been heightened since Saddam Hussein's relatively
    easy defeat in the recent war in Iraq.
    
    "We used the same weapons platforms as we did in Desert Storm," noted
    Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr., who leads the Defense Information Systems
    Agency. But thanks to enhanced communications systems, "we used them
    much more effectively."
    
    For example, the U.S. military's use of wideband satellite
    communications increased by more than 3,000 percent during the second
    Gulf War compared to the first, Raduege said. Iridium satellite phone
    usage shot up 4,800 percent since Sept. 11. Traffic on the Pentagon's
    data networks increased by 557 to 869 percent during a similar period.
    
    In the past, the different military services barely spoke to one
    another. During the recent conflict in Iraq, they were more tightly
    coordinated than ever before. The trend will only continue in the
    future: Over the next five years, according to Defense Department
    projections, the military will spend $28 billion on "leveraging
    information technology."
    
    Now the Pentagon would like to bring so-called "first responders" --
    emergency medical technicians, firefighters, police and the like --
    into the loop, said Gen. Paul Kern, head of U.S. Army Materiel
    Command, in his opening address at TechNet.
    
    But these groups need the right equipment to be able to chat with each
    other more effectively, Kern added. It's an order the gear makers in
    his audience are all too happy to fulfill.
    
    
    
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