VAR500: Accenture Sees Support For Health-Care IT; CSC Debuts Government Cloud Solution

VAR500 Solution Providers In The News

The top North American IT solution providers continued the momentum starting off the new year, expanding their businesses, introducing new services and investigating what's working in health-care IT offerings. Here's what's happening at VAR500 companies, Accenture, CSC, Deloitte Consulting, ePlus, Fiserv and Sigma Solutions.

Accenture Study Finds Support For Health-Care IT Solutions

Participants in an Accenture survey of more than 3,700 doctors in eight countries said that health-care IT is improving health practices. But some physicians do not yet see all the benefits, especially those over 50 or those who are not actively using health-care IT, such as electronic medical records (EMR) and health information exchanges (HIE). Respondents credited health-care IT with providing better access to quality data for clinical research (70.9 percent reported positive benefits), improved coordination of care (69.1 percent) and a reduction in medical errors (66 percent).

CSC Solution Debuts Cloud Solution For Government Customers

CSC CloudCompute for Government (CCFG) debuted this week. CCFG provides infrastructure as a service for CSC’s new federal community cloud. Designed primarily for federal agencies and government personnel, this multi-tenant community cloud provides the flexibility of a public cloud, at a fraction of the cost of a private cloud or a traditional data center. The cloud computing solution's pay-as-you-go pricing structure allows users to only pay for services as they use them, providing agility and cost savings.

Deloitte Increases Mobility Play With Ubermind

IT solution provider Deloitte has purchased Ubermind, a Seattle-based firm focused on mobile application development. The deal aims to broaden Deloitte's efforts to provide industry-specific mobile applications that it can design and sell to customers. Ubermind's technology could potentially influence Deloitte's lifecycle professional services businesses and overall mobile strategy.

ePlus Buys UC Solution Provider VantiCore

ePlus Technology, a subsidiary of ePlus, Inc., bought the operating business of VantiCore, a Cisco-focused solutions provider headquartered in New Hampshire, on January 6, 2012. With expertise in advanced unified communications, collaboration and customer contact center solutions, ePlus gains increased market presence in New England as well as enhanced Cisco engineering delivery capabilities to complement its existing UC, data center, and managed services practices. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Fiserv Sues Fidelity Over Patents

Two Fiserv subsidiaries, CheckFree Corporation and CashEdge, have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Fidelity National Information Services and its subsidiary, Metavante, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The VAR500 solution provider, alleges that FIS infringes on Fiserv's patents when it provides customers with certain financial and payment solutions, including FIS's Payment Manager products, which process inter-bank account-to-account fund transfers, process payment instructions, and provide electronic biller notifications as a part of its electronic bill payment processes.

Sigma Solutions Acquires Laurus Division

VAR500 solution provider Sigma Solutions purchased the server/storage/virtualization division of Chicago-based Laurus Technologies. That is Sigma's second acquisiton in the Midwest in the last six months. The deal will combine the Laurus SSV Division with the San Antonio, Texas-based VAR's earlier purchase of the Midwest assets of Artemis Technology. The deal will bring Sigma's broad portfolio of solution offerings centered around private cloud computing, mobility, data center and managed services to Laurus' large, established customer base.