AT DEADLINE.

BEST Buy Co. Inc. BBY; ACCENTURE (Company) ; SUN Microsystems Inc. SUNW; INTERNATIONAL Business Machines Corp. 001368083 IBM

This section presents news briefs on the U.S. computer industry as of July 19, 2004. Best Buy Co. said it has finalized a seven-year information technology (IT) outsourcing and consulting contract with Accenture Ltd., which will take over management of the retailer's IT infrastructure plus application development and maintenance. About 600 IT workers will shift from Best Buy to Accenture as part of the deal. In a separate news, Sun Microsystems Inc. said it is thinking of offering its Java Enterprise System (JES) server software under an open-source license. JES includes products such as Sun's application and Web server software. Sun last month released the source code for a 3-D user interface called Looking Glass and said it would make Solaris available under an open-source model by year's end. Meanwhile, IBM reported a higher-than-expected profit of $2 billion for the second quarter, up 17 percent year over year. Revenue totaled $23.2 billion, 7 percent above the year-earlier figure but lower than Wall Street analysts had forecast. IBM was the latest vendor to disclose a shortfall in software sales during the quarter.