AT&T Lands $1 Billion Contract From GM

[mgescuro]

AT&T Lands $1 Billion Contract From GM


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...f082516S95.DTL

Five years ago, General Motors Corp.'s worldwide telecommunications system was lagging the company's fledgling effort to globalize vehicle design, engineering and manufacturing.
It would take an hour or more for an engineer in Europe to send a large computerized design file to a manufacturing plant overseas, and another hour for the plant to send the file back with any changes.
Now, as the company moves toward building more models in more places off the same underpinnings to save billions of dollars, GM and AT&T Inc. have a network in place that allows engineers and plant officials worldwide to simultaneously view the same data and discuss it.
On Wednesday, GM gave AT&T even more business, awarding it a five-year, $1 billion global networking contract that will prepare the world's largest automaker for whatever electronic breakthroughs lie ahead.
"It'll let us manage the increased data over the next five years," said Ralph Szygenda, GM's chief information officer. The pact will increase GM's productivity, he said.



[More at Link]

[fastball]

Sounds like a good deal for both companies. AT&T gets a nice global project, and GM should easily reap benefits with their global design initiative. Imagine holding a video conference linking engineers in Detroit, Munich, and Sydney at the same time to discuss chasis design for the next Impala.

When GM said their designs were going global, they meant it.

[Member17739]

I can't complain, I'm a shareholder in both companies.

[jbernie]

Remove the obstacles (ie slow networks) that prevent the company from advancing and you remove the excuses for people to not cooperate and work together in making GM products market leading.

[Sporer65]

Good for GM and this may have nothing related, but AT&T owns Cingular and GM now has Verizon available with OnStar. So, will GM continue with Verizon or now swithc to Cingular since the contract has been signed. Or, will they have both available.

[rsbaker]

Originally Posted by Sporer65

Good for GM and this may have nothing related, but AT&T owns Cingular and GM now has Verizon available with OnStar. So, will GM continue with Verizon or now swithc to Cingular since the contract has been signed. Or, will they have both available.

I'd bet they'll be making a switch to ATT/Cincular/Bellsouth in the near future.

[iamwin]

I doubt Onstar would or could switch to ATT wireless, as ATT runs GSM and Verizon is CDMA. It does raise the valid point that onstar should run on all of the big companies' networks if it truly is to be useful.

[mgescuro]

I dont think the deal will affect the Verizon-Onstar relationship.
But I would like to see Onstar use all cellular platforms.

[asim]

Crap. 1 billion dollars is a whole crap load of money. As long as GM can get work done faster, I am for it!

[Globalist]

Good news. IT for corporations is like our nervous system. Better have a fast and flexible one otherwise you are paralyzed.

[cfch3399]

Oh no. I despise ATT and don't trust them a second. GM better watch out and make sure they're getting their billion worth of service/product/support from those crooks.

[GM_Fanatic]

Originally Posted by Member17739

I can't complain, I'm a shareholder in both companies.

...What was that saying about various different eggs in some ol' basket?

[redimpss5]

WHAT!!! Screw those hippies, let them raise the money themselves!

[mw3538]

This is a win - win for everyone. It helps GM save money by speeding up things and not wasting time sitting around on files to transfer. AT&T will benifit as well with the income and publicity they will get from this deal as well. Not sure about the on star deal though! As far as AT & T being crooks, this is not even close to the same AT & T from the past.