California ups IT infrastructure

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a legislation to improve the state's IT infrastructure, increase government efficiency and save costs, says California News Wire.

It creates a permanent structure for IT governance as outlined in the governor's reorganisation plan, which consolidates state IT functions under the office of the state chief information officer.

“Since the beginning of my administration, I have been a strong advocate for rebuilding the state's technology systems to make them work better and more efficiently for the people of California,” says Schwarzenegger.

Voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) software specialist Spirit DSP has spun off its videoconferencing operation, and the new company will be called VideoMost, reports CED Magazine.

VideoMost is licensing the videoconferencing software to service providers of all stripes. Licensees will be able to private-label videoconferencing services based on the product, it says.

VideoMost's software enables what it calls “massively multi-point Web video conferencing”. It can scale up to 1 000 concurrent video channels on a standard $4 000 PC server, the company says.

Northrop Grumman has embarked on a $2.8 billion deal to provide IT solutions to the US Social Security Administration (SSA), writes Zacks.com.

Northrop, an enterprise architecture (EA) specialist, will perform a variety of technology services under the seven-year Information Technology Support Services (ITSS) contract. Work on the contract will be conducted in Baltimore.

The company will provide service delivery to SSA stakeholders through IT and business process improvements under this contract, as well as support services related to application and business planning, analysis and requirements; data administration, programmatic repository and enterprise architecture; and software engineering management.