Education poses a challenge to tech companies

Its slice of the stimulus bill pales in comparison to energy, health care and broadband, but education poses a challenge to tech companies. The budget allots $650 million for schools to purchase technology and carefully pour it into individual schools - from improved technology Sony VGP-BPS13A battery, for teaching and administrative use to community outreach.
The dizzying amounts have tech giants jockeying to land government contracts, the first expected to be awarded in the next few weeks. IBM (IBM), General Electric (GE), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Intel (INTC) and some well-positioned start-ups are among suitors poised to capitalize.
"Technology is great, people are better," says Mary Cullinane, Microsoft's director of innovation in U.S. Education. The company counts among its works a "school of the future" in west Philadelphia. Students there have laptops Sony VGP-BPS13B battery, and smart cards for access to lockers and building entrances, for example.
It allocates tens of billions of dollars for tech upgrades to energy ($4.5 billion for smart grids), health care ($20 billion for electronic medical records), broadband deployment and education.
Software giant SAP America has carved a considerable niche in the market and offers a potential template HID Kits . It foresees modernizing the business system infrastructure for current customers - ranging from statewide school systems in Texas and Pennsylvania to colleges such as Purdue University and MIT - so that administrators can better manage budgets."It is analogous to improving an existing highway," says Pat Bakey, SAP's executive vice president of strategic industries.
Cisco, meanwhile, hopes federal contracts will help it extend the reach of its 21st Century schools initiative on the Gulf Coast, which brought high-speed Internet access, laptops VGP-BPS13 battery, digital cameras, PDAs and more to 21 K-12 schools in post-Katrina Louisiana and Mississippi.
The biggest federal public works project since World War II offers tantalizing possibilities for the struggling tech market. President Obama's staggering $787 billion economic stimulus package, passed in February, could be a financial oasis DM 500s — especially for an industry facing a precipitous drop in tech spending by economically ravaged corporations and consumers.