| Schlumberger to Acquire Over 70 Percent of Convergent Group
Convergent Group announced the signing of a definitive agreement with a wholly-owned subsidiary of Schlumberger Limited, under the terms of which the Schlumberger subsidiary will acquire approximately 71.7 percent of the outstanding common shares of Convergent Group, including all shares held by the public, for $8.00 per share in cash. Convergent Group management and employees will own approximately 26 percent of the remaining shares, and Cinergy Ventures LLC, a unit of Cinergy Corp. the firm's largest client, will retain equity in the firm, holding the remaining ownership interest. The agreement and the tender offer were negotiated and approved by a committee of independent directors of Convergent Group, and the agreement provides that Convergent Group may consider superior proposals to the tender offer and the merger.
Defining Convergent Group's objective for the transaction, President and Chief Executive Officer Glenn E. Montgomery explained that the merger should position the firm to capture greater market share for the Digital Utility, its service offering that helps enable utilities to transform their business models into digital business enterprises.
The objectives of the Digital Utility are to revolutionize the customers' experiences by empowering them with direct, anytime access to services and information and to reduce utility transaction and operational costs by enabling end-to-end automation of customers' business processes.
Prior to the merger, the Digital Utility addressed key business issues spanning front-office applications, including call center and customer relationship management; back-office applications like finance, accounting and human resources; and energy delivery applications like mobile work force and outage management. As a result of the merger, the Digital Utility is expected to be expanded to include revenue management, load data management and fixed network optimization.
"We believe that Schiumberger's global presence and experience should enhance Convergent Group's capability to deliver its solutions to end users worldwide, and we are very enthusiastic about our newly formed partnership with Schlumberger," commented Larry E. Thomas, group president of new technologies for Cinergy Corp. "The combined strengths of our companies will provide technology and thought leadership to the markets we serve," said Clermont Matton, executive vice president of Schiumberger RMS. "The merger represents an opportunity to develop and market new technologies and solutions that are not available anywhere else."
For more information, contact: Robert S. Wechsler; Vice President, Investor Relations; Convergent Group; 6399 S. Fiddler's Green Circle, #600; Englewood, CO 80111; (303) 566-6850; E-mail: [email protected]
HJW Lands Contract to Map Coconino County
Hammon, Jensen and Wallen (HJW), Inc. (www.hjw.com) has been awarded a contract by the nation's second largest county, Coconino County, AZ, to provide digital orthophotography of the 325 sq. mile area surrounding the City of Flagstaff. The first stage of the pilot project will begin later this week when HJW sends its aircraft up to acquire aerial photography of the region. The resulting imagery will be orthorectified to produce 1" = 400' black and white orthophotos with 2 ' pixels including street centerlines to update the County's database.
"The County's primary concern is our citizens' benefit. We believe that the digital orthophotography will be an effective communications tool to promote community participation in land use issues by making our citizens better informed," said Dr. Dharmesh Jain, Director, Department of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Coconino County. "These images will also allow the County to increase our efficiency and services which, again, is just added value for our constituents," he added. The imagery will be used for numerous applications countywide, such as supplementing their new emergency response system for the Sheriff's Department.
HJW's orthophoto project also launches the County's future development of a comprehensive GIS program. "Coconino County's GIS group told us that they are totally committed to building a vertically integrated GIS database. They plan on creating multi data layers, including land parcels, topographic, zoning and land use," said Joseph Bartorelli, HJW Director of Consulting and Development Services. "The success of that project depends on a solid base map. HJW has provided mapping solutions to dozens of counties throughout the Southwest, so we know that we can get the job done. The fact that HJW was chosen to essentially create the foundation for the County's future plans makes our work that much more significant," he said.
A founding leader in the geospatial mapping industry, HJW offers an integrated suite of custom professional mapping services that include: aerial photography; photogrammetry and topographic mapping; digital orthophotography as well as GIS and remote sensing. Founded as a small Northern California forestry company in 1949, HJW now serves all southwestern states with offices in Oakland, Irvine, Walnut Creek and Santa Rosa, CA as well as Phoenix, AZ.
For more information, contact : Kurt Okraski, 602.955.5899, [email protected]
Tripod Data Systems Enhances Survey Pro CE
Tripod Data Systems announced the release of Survey Link for Windows CE version 7.1. This version adds more support for Survey Pro for Windows CE and enhanced geodetic functions.
Users can now open, edit and convert Survey Pro for Windows CE raw data files and they can use the new archive feature to maintain a permanent and uneditable record of the original survey data. They can also use archived files to create backup copies of the raw data. The new sub-grid file feature let users select a portion of a geoid file and create a separate sub-grid file. It can then be transferred to the data collector for field use. The sub-grid feature creates a much smaller file than the original geoid file so files transfer faster and the files take up less space on the data collector. The result is that the surveyor only takes the data to the field that is required reducing complexity and speeding operations.
For more information, contact Tripod Data Systems by telephone at 541-753-9322, by fax at 541-757-7439, by email at [email protected] or on the web at www.tdsway.com.
Research Systems, Inc. Announces Worldwide Release of IDL 5.4
Research Systems, Inc announced the worldwide release of version 5.4 of IDL, the Interactive Data Language. IDL is software for data analysis, visualization, and cross-platform application development. IDL includes all the tools needed for "quick-look," interactive analysis, display and large-scale commercial programming projects, in a fully extensible environment.
Versions of IDL 5.4 are available for Microsoft Windows® 95/98/NT/2000, Macintosh®, and UNIX® platforms, including support for Red Hat Linux on the Compaq Alpha platform, which is new to this version. IDL 5.4 New Features and Enhancements
Version 5.4 adds power and new capabilities to the core language, data I/O, analysis and visualization areas of IDL. The new features expand IDL's industrial strength capabilities for processing and visualizing large complex data. It's now easier to build GIS interoperability in IDL-based applications with support for ArcView* Shape Files. Increased flexibility and performance characterize the enhancement and extension of existing functionality. Language
* Support for files larger than two Gigabytes on Microsoft Windows because data providers are now delivering these large files to our customers
* TCP/IP sockets via client side TCP/IP Internet sockets allow data and applications to connect over a network * Fully 64-bit application on Sun UltraSparc Solaris and Compaq Alpha Tru64 UNIX
* Support of the Macintosh Velocity Engine (Altivec) for increased performance on the most common matrix operations Data Access
* Support for ESRI
* (ArcView) Shape Files for applications requiring GIS capabilities
* Improved READ_ASCII performance
* MPEG quality settings and performance improvements for more control over animations Analysis
* Enhanced FFT performance and accuracy by implementing a more modern algorithm
* Hough and Radon Transforms, Savitsky-Golay smoothing filter, BESELK function, LaGuerre and Legendre polynomials, adding to IDL's extensive analysis library
* ROBERTS and SOBEL functions now return data types other than integer for more edge-enhancement flexibility Visualization
* Double precision graphics in IDL Direct and Object Graphics systems allows visualization of double precision data without scaling and also for enhanced data/time support.
* Windows Metafile Format (WMF) now supported in both Direct and Object Graphics to facilitate import of IDL graphics into popular desktop applications. Utilities
* New lib/utilities directory with time-saving reusable utility routines, including:
* XDXF: (AutoCAD) file viewer utility application
* XOBJVIEW: Interactive Object Graphics visualization utility
* XROI: Region of interest definition and viewing utility application
* XVOLUME: 3D volume rendering utility application
For more information contact www.ResearchSystems.com.
National Integrated Land System (NILS) Project
The Concept of Operations and User Requirements (COURS) document was finalized in March of 2000. The General, the Survey Management, the Measurement Management, and the Parcel Management Requirements ("Use Cases") from the COURS document and were expanded into a more detailed set of requirements. These detailed requirements can be found on the NILS web site at: http://www.blm.gov/nils/bus-req/index.htm in "The National Integrated Land System (NILS) Detailed Requirements Document Draft September 29, 2000".
This document and the COURS document will be the basis for the Analysis and Design phase of NILS. The COURS document is also available on the NILS website at the above address.
The Bureau of Land Management, NILS Project Office encourages the review this new document and to send your comments and concerns to [email protected] or you may call him at (303) 236-1089.
GTX Corporation Announces GTXRaster CAD Series V6.0
GTX" Corporation announced that GTXRaster CAD V6.0 for AutoCAD 2000 is compatible with AutoCAD 2000i. "Our tests have confirmed Autodesk's assurance that third-party ARX applications developed for AutoCAD 2000, such as the GTXRaster CAD Series Version 6.0, are compatible with their 2000i release," said Nolan LeBlanc, Product Manager. "To the best of our knowledge, the existing GTXRaster CAD Series V6.0 user base can safely migrate to the 2000i release without having to upgrade their GTXRaster CAD Series products."
The GTXRaster CAD Series is a total raster clean up, editing and raster-to-vector conversion solution available as a plug-in for AutoCAD releases 13, 14, 2000 and 2000i.
For More Information, contact: Brenda Moorhead, GTX Corporation, Phone (602) 224-8720 Fax: (602) 224-8730, E-mail: [email protected]
Global Geomatics' OGDI technology integration in Colombian Oil Company
Global Geomatics announced the integration of its technology in the largest Oil Company in Colombia, Ecopetrol. This new contract for Global Geomatics in Colombia solidified the technological alliance with Digital Geographic Solutions, based in Santa Barbara, California. Global Geomatics Inc. is well known for providing complete data access solution for reading and transforming spatial data. According to the VAR alliance between the 2 companies, Digeos sells the Global Geomatics' technology which allows data to be shared among people and organizations that have data resources in different GIS, CAD and database formats.
The extended VAR agreement between Digeos and Global Geomatics will now increase the geodata reach of the oil company Ecopetrol. With the c@ssini server technology providing real-time access to the full range of existing geodata formats (without time-consuming translation), Ecopetrol relies on Global Geomatics' products for the integration of its geoEnhanced Information sytem.
More information on the company can be found at www.globalgeo.com.
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