Dell Becomes Carbon Free

Dell facilities world over are now carbon free.
The company told that they have achieved their goal; that was to achieve carbon free environment friendly facilities by 2008.
Dane Parker, its director for environment, health and safety, said Dell buys renewable energy — including wind, solar and methane gas — directly from utilities to fulfill one-fifth of its energy needs.

There is not enough green energy available for all of Dell's requirements, so for the other 80 percent, Dell buys regular "brown" power, Parker said, plus enough renewable energy credits to offset that power's carbon emissions. Those credits subsidize purchases of renewable energy by other organizations, in places where more green power is available.

The company also said it has cut its energy use with more efficient lighting, modern climate control systems and software that shuts off idle office computers after hours, for a savings of $3 million a year, or about 5 percent of its annual energy bill.

Dell isn't the first company to declare its operations carbon neutral, but it's the first global high-tech player to do so, said Stephen Stokes, a climate change and business analyst for AMR Research. "They do deserve some congratulations," Stokes said, noting that the company took steps beyond just buying energy credits.

"Even if you were the worst carbon emitter in the world, if you wrote a huge check ... you could claim to be carbon neutral," he said.

Dell, the world's second-largest computer company, also is ahead of No. 1 PC maker Hewlett-Packard Co. on this matter.

Sale to HP will end EDS independence

Eight months into his tenure as CEO of Electronic Data Systems Corp., Ronald Rittenmeyer is overseeing the sale of the company, something he says he never planned."It just came together," Rittenmeyer said Tuesday during an interview.

The sale to Hewlett-Packard Co. is a milestone for a company that was started on a shoestring in 1962 by H. Ross Perot, who quit a sales job at IBM to work for himself. The company has remained independent for all but a few years when it was owned by General Motors Corp.

EDS will stay in Plano and keep "EDS" in its name, officials said. It even plans to continue sponsoring the annual EDS Byron Nelson pro golf tournament.

The company, which runs call centers and computer systems for big companies and government agencies, has a larger technology-services business than HP. Mark Hurd, HP's CEO, said EDS is "more mature" in that regard and has capabilities that HP's services unit lacks.

The impact of the deal on EDS' 137,000 employees is uncertain. Rod Bourgeois, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said he expects some EDS jobs to disappear as the companies combine work forces.

In a conference call with analysts Tuesday, Hurd, in California, and Rittenmeyer, who was in New York, repeatedly used the word "synergies" to describe the benefits the combined company would see as it cuts overlapping costs.

"In terms of job cuts, we are continuing to streamline our work force at EDS," Rittenmeyer said during the conference call. "We've been doing that for some time ... there are always job adjustments."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Rittenmeyer said, "Employees who do a good job, who are good performers, don't have to worry about anything."

The CEO said the company is constantly evaluating employees and shedding underperformers.

"All this does is provide a catalyst for us to look perhaps a little deeper, a little wider," he said in the interview.

EDS practically invented the industry that came to be known as information-technology outsourcing. Perot, who went on to run for U.S. president in 1992 and 1996, hired many military veterans who generally came to work in white shirts, ties and short hair cuts.

Perot sold EDS to GM in 1984 for $2.5 billion. GM later bought out Perot's remaining shares for another $700 million, but it spun off EDS in 1996 for $500 million.

By then, it had been surpassed by IBM in technology-services revenue.

Rittenmeyer's predecessors Michael H. Jordan and Dick Brown each cut thousands of jobs and moved thousands more to low-cost countries, especially India. EDS now has 45,000 workers in what it calls "best-shore" locations, and plans to increase that number.

EDS has been the subject of takeover speculation for years. Deutsche Telekom AG was reported to be looking at it last year. Earlier rumors centered on Dell Inc. Neither company ever confirmed the reports.

Shareholders will vote on the HP deal. Rittenmeyer declined to say whether there were other offers.

"There are no obvious competing bids that may emerge," said David Grossman, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners, citing the $25 per share that HP will pay, which is about 30 percent higher than EDS shares traded Monday before news of the deal leaked.

The shares topped $70 in 2000 and 2001, but they haven't been at $25 since last July. Analysts said the EDS board might have decided a sale was the quickest way to get the price up.

"The board had a whole series of deliberations and conversations," beyond the challenge EDS faced lifting the stock price on its own, Rittenmeyer said in the interview. "I'm comfortable that our board made a decision with shareholders in mind first."

After Brown arrived in 1999, the company won many huge contracts and earned more than $1 billion a year from 2000 through 2002. But it lost $1.7 billion in 2003 due partly to a money-draining contract with the Navy, the stock plunged and the company faced shareholder lawsuits and a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into its accounting practices.

Jordan, a retired Westinghouse CEO, was brought in to fix the problem contracts and cut costs. After two years of small profits, earnings grew in 2006 and 2007, and new work was coming in. Jordan stepped down in September, and Rittenmeyer was promoted from chief operating officer.

Civic leaders in Plano, where EDS moved from neighboring Dallas in 1993, are worried about the uncertainty surrounding a major taxpayer and supporter of its symphony and other nonprofits.

"The concern we'd have locally is the potential impact on the housing market with a loss of jobs," said Jamie Schell, the incoming chairman of the local chamber of commerce. "But maybe the result will be a more stable company."

For now, "it appears to be a great deal for the shareholders," said another chamber director, Jim Boswell, "and I'm sure many EDS employees living in Plano own EDS stock."

Sales of Ink and Laptops Push H.P. Past Forecast

The Hewlett-Packard Company’s third-quarter sales and profit breezed past Wall Street’s estimates as the company continued to cash in on healthy sales of laptop computers and lucrative printing ink. Shares rose more than 2 percent on a higher financial forecast.
H.P.’s net income for the quarter that ended July 31 was $1.78 billion, or 66 cents a share, a 29 percent jump from the $1.38 billion, or 48 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Excluding one-time charges, the company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., earned 71 cents a share, 5 cents above the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
Sales were $25.38 billion, a 16 percent increase from the $21.89 billion recorded a year ago. Revenue was more than $1 billion above the $24.09 billion that analysts predicted.
The biggest sales jump came in the Personal Systems Group, which includes desktop and laptop computers and is H.P.’s biggest source of revenue. Bolstered by laptop sales that grew 54 percent over last year, revenue within the segment grew to $8.89 billion this year from $6.92 billion last year.
Last fall, while a boardroom spying scandal connected with H.P.’s investigation of unauthorized leaks to the news media was publicly unraveling, the company reclaimed the title of the No. 1 seller of PCs worldwide from its struggling rival Dell.
H.P. made use of its widespread presence in retail stores and consumers’ growing preference for laptop computers. The company commanded about 19 percent of the worldwide PC market in the second quarter, compared with Dell’s 16 percent, according to the market research company IDC, citing the most recent data available.
Analysts have been concerned about a potential slowdown in H.P.’s imaging and printing group, a closely watched division that includes the high-margin inkjet cartridges that have long been the company’s cash cow. They have worried that Eastman Kodak’s foray this year into the inkjet-printer market with lower-priced products could harm H.P.’s profitability.
But the H.P. operation delivered a strong showing in the third quarter. Its operating profit rose 11 percent from $884 million to $981 million. The unit provided nearly 40 percent of the company’s total operating profit.
Investors have strongly backed the leadership of the chief executive, Mark V. Hurd, whose cost-cutting measures have included jettisoning some 15,000 jobs since he was appointed in 2005, as well as streamlining operations and improving profit margins.
That support has been reflected in a doubling of H.P.’s market value since Mr. Hurd was named chief executive after the tumultuous tenure of Carleton S. Fiorina, who was fired in February 2005. H.P.’s market capitalization stands at nearly $121 billion today, reflecting the addition of nearly $60 billion in shareholder wealth under Mr. Hurd’s watch.
On Thursday, investors drove the stock up after the company upgraded its own outlook.
H.P. said it expected profit in the fourth quarter of 80 cents to 81 cents a share, excluding one-time charges, a few pennies higher than the 78 cents analysts were expecting. Sales are expected to be $27 billion to $27.2 billion, also higher than the $26.46 billion predicted by Wall Street analysts.
H.P. shares climbed 45 cents, to $46.50, in after-hours trading. Before the results were released, the stock had closed down 10 cents at $46.05.

I.B.M. and Sun to Cooperate in Technologies for Servers

Two longtime rivals in computing, I.B.M. and Sun Microsystems , plan to cooperate on server technologies, a move that could put pressure on their competitor Hewlett-Packard.
Sun’s chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, said the new “comprehensive relationship” brought “a tectonic shift in the market landscape.”
The collaboration announced yesterday will enable Sun’s Solaris operating system to run on International Business Machine servers. Among other things, that means customers that run Sun servers will be able to switch to I.B.M. hardware without having to rewrite any programs.
At first this will be possible on I.B.M.’s x series of servers, which also run Microsoft Windows or the open-source Linux system. But eventually I.B.M. hopes to bring Solaris to mainframes, the big multitasking machines that have been a core profit center for the company for decades.
I.B.M. has been expanding the kinds of programs that can run on mainframes, to encourage customers to consolidate multiple servers onto these bigger machines as a cost-saving move.
These steps threaten to take Sun servers out of action in favor of I.B.M. machines. But Sun can gain from this partnership by collecting Solaris service subscriptions from customers who run that operating system on I.B.M. hardware.
The arrangement is in keeping with Sun’s strategy to rebound from a devastating slump in the first part of the decade by broadening its role as a software vendor. This week, Sun and Google expanded their partnership as Google began distributing Sun’s StarOffice suite of word processing, spreadsheets and other desktop programs.
“Our view is when you make your products available on other people’s platforms, you just meet more customers, which just gives you more opportunities,” Mr. Schwartz said.
Hewlett-Packard is locked in a battle with I.B.M. for leadership in the worldwide server market. I.B.M. and H.P. each had 29 percent share in the most recent assessment by the market tracker IDC, while Sun and Dell Inc. were tied for third, with 11 percent each.