Maryland HR dept outsources

The State of Maryland`s Department of Human Resources is outsourcing its computer systems to a team led by Affiliated Computer Systems under a deal valued at $110 million, reports Information Week.

ACS, along with IBM, Syscom and a group of minority-owned vendors, will handle mainframe management, Web hosting, disaster recovery, application services and help-desk functions for the state`s human resources department under a three-year deal.

IT outsourcing by state and local governments is expected to grow from $10 billion in 2005 to $18 billion in 2010.

Users say problems with Symantec`s latest version of Veritas NetBackup are keeping them from rolling out the application even though the data backup and recovery product was shipped a year ago, according to Computerworld.

Veritas Software announced NetBackup 6.0 in April 2005 and began shipping it in October, just after Symantec announced it was buying Veritas.

Users on at least two Web site forums dedicated to Symantec customers said they are hoping that Symantec`s Maintenance Pack 4, due out around October, will fix bugs they are finding in NetBackup 6.0.

IBM is adding encryption as a standard feature on its enterprise-class tape storage drives, reports Computerworld.

In a short announcement on its Web site that contained few specifics about the technology or pricing, IBM said its TS1120 tape drives would now include native encryption capabilities.

The functionality, particularly the key management, is important for users who have been concerned about the security of their storage, most acutely at remote offices, said John Webster, an analyst at Data Mobility Group LLC in New Hampshire.