Facebook Floats
Friday, February 03, 2012
The world’s biggest social network is expected to seek a $75 billion to $100 billion valuation in its IPO, the most anticipated stock offering from Silicon Valley since Google Inc went public in 2004. At Granite Investment Advisors in New Hampshire, Chief Investment Officer Scott Schermerhorn has already been fielding queries from clients eager to get in on the action.
“We had some clients call and once we step them through the numbers, they sober up,” he said. “The valuation is 100 times earnings in a stock market that is trading at 12.”
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VeriSign Acknowledges Multiple Security Breaches
VeriSign has acknowledged that it was hacked “repeatedly” by external entities who stole undisclosed information.
According to Reuters, the previously unconfirmed breaches occurred in 2010 at the Virginia-based company, which is responsible for ensuring the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov.
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SAP Delay Buyback
SAP to delay buyback until SuccessFactors loan repaid
SAP Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt said he will postpone a share buyback until the software maker has repaid a loan used to purchase SuccessFactors.
Separately, SAP will to reach an operating margin of at least 35 percent in 2015, Brandt further said.
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Sony Warns Huge Annual Loss
Sony has warned it is heading for a bigger-than-expected ¥220bn (£1.8bn) annual loss, presenting a daunting task for incoming chief executive Kazuo Hirai, who has vowed to move quickly to turn things around.
Overtaken by more innovative rivals such as Apple and Samsung over the past decade, the Japanese electronics and media conglomerate posted a ¥159bn loss between October and December – normally a strong quarter boosted by end-of-year holiday sales – as it battled a strong yen, flooding in Thailand that ruptured supply chains and a weak economy.
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Commodities Trader Glencore in Talks to Buy Mining Group Xstrata
Commodities trader Glencore is in talks to buy mining group Xstrata in an all-share transaction that could create a combined group worth more than 50 billion pounds ($79 billion), shaking up the industry with its biggest deal to date.
Glencore, the world’s largest diversified commodities trader, already owns 34 percent of Xstrata and a tie-up between the two—a deal which would trump Rio Tinto’s $38 billion acquisition of Alcan in 2007—has long been expected, as Glencore aims to add more mines to its trading clout
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Vodafone and Teleperformance Announce Strategic Partnership
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Vodafone and Teleperformance, a UK leader in outsourced customer services, have announced a new strategic partnership which will see Teleperformance taking on some of the work currently managed at Vodafone’s Newark contact centre.
This new partnership will see the transfer of 207 roles in three of Vodafone’s specialist operations team to Teleperformance. This will mean continuous employment for these individuals with the same terms and conditions.
Teleperformance has been chosen for their experience and expertise as a leader in the provision of customer services in the business sector.
The partnership underlines the importance of Vodafone’s operations in Newark and our commitment to provide the best service for all business customers.
Alistair Niederer, CEO of Teleperformance said: “This will be a true collaboration with Vodafone and the partnership will ensure a great future for the Newark contact centre and the services we can provide for business customers. We look forward to welcoming our new colleagues over the coming months.”
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Serco Signs New Contract With British Army
Serco Group plc, the international service company, announces that it has signed a contract with the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) to provide training and support to the British Army prior to deployment on operations around the world.
Known as the Contemporary Operating Environment Force (COEFOR), and awarded by the British Army’s Headquarters, the contract will start in April 2012. Including an option year, the contract has a total value to Serco of approximately £55m through to December 2014.
Under the contract Serco will provide critical pre-deployment training including essential language, culture and operational environment skills, and will create realistic training conditions to prepare UK military forces for deployed operations primarily in Afghanistan, but also worldwide. To deliver the programme, Serco has created new partnerships with a number of small and medium sized enterprises to supply some of the specialised training services.
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AstraZeneca Cut 7,500 Jobs
AstraZeneca to cut a further 7,300 jobs This is AstraZeneca’s third restructuring programme since 2007.
Anglo-Swedish drugs maker AstraZeneca has announced a further 7,300 job cuts over the next two years as part of a new restructuring programme.
The GMB Union has said 250 to 300 of the cuts will be in R&D at the firm’s site in Alderley Park, Cheshire.
It also said there would be unspecified back office cuts at other UK sites.
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Capita Acquires Smiths Consulting Limited
Capita plc has acquired Smiths Consulting Ltd for a cash consideration of £10m on a cash free, debt free basis, with a further contingent consideration of up to £2m based on profit performance over the next two years.
Smiths Consulting is a SAP consultancy that specialises in delivering business change enabled by technology .The company has a strong customer presence in markets that include government, aerospace, telecommunications and finance.
The acquisition will enhance Capita’s existing in-house SAP consultancy capabilities by creating a core hub of expertise and resource.
Smiths Consulting’s employees are spread across the country and its business operations are located in Newcastle, with additional offices in London and Chelmsford. The business has 52 direct employees and is supported by 150 associates.
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Sony Names as Kazuo Hirai as CEO
The PlayStation boss will replace Howard Stringer at a crucial time for the consumer electronics giant.
Sony has confirmed that PlayStation boss Kazuo Hirai will be the company’s next chief executive. He will take over from current CEO Howard Stringer in April, with Stringer assuming the role as chairman of the board of directors.
The move comes after weeks of speculation – and following a challenging business period for the consumer electronics veteran. The company is facing its fourth consecutive annual loss, and stock value has dropped by more than 50% since Stringer became the company’s first non-Japanese CEO in 2005.
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IBM Acquire Worklight Inc
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), the world’s biggest computer-services provider, is acquiring Worklight Inc., a closely held maker of software for smartphones and tablets to enhance its mobile-service offerings.
Worklight’s software accelerates the delivery of employee and consumer mobile applications to multiple devices and enables secure connections to a company’s information-technology systems, Armonk, New York-based IBM said today in a statement. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
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Hartlepool Borough Council Confirms 7-Year Contract
Plans to outsource core council services and dozens of staff to a private firm have been confirmed after it was called in for scrutiny.
Hartlepool Borough Council is to transfer about 65 staff from its revenues and benefits departments to a private sector firm selected as the preferred bidder for the contract.
The plans had originally been backed in December. Details of the 7-year contract are currently confidential.
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Swiss Outsourcing Group DKSH Prepares to List on Zurich Stock Exchange
Swiss outsourcing company DKSH is preparing to list on the Zurich stock exchange and the Asia-focussed firm has picked bank UBS as lead manager, Swiss newspaper TagesAnzeiger reported on Wednesday.
DKSH, Switzerland’s largest privately-held company, helps Swiss and European companies gain a foothold and grow their business in fast-growing Asian markets.
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North Lanarkshire Completes Data Cleansing
North Lanarkshire Council has announced the completion of a successful customer data cleansing and matching exercise to transform the quality of its citizen records and improve customer service efficiency for citizens contacting the council.
In a council-wide improvement project pioneered by the council to create a complete view of all citizen information, North Lanarkshire Council turned to Experian QAS and The Improvement Service to analyse thousands of customer records from across the council, including council tax and housing benefit information.
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BMC to Acquire Numara Software
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) major BMC Software has announced that it is set to acquire Numara Software, a provider of integrated IT management solutions for medium-sized businesses. The transaction is expected to be closed by BMC’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends on March 31. However, the terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Post acquisition, Numara will offer different BMC products like FootPrints and Track-It!, which also complement BMC’s existing portfolio. This strategic move on the company’s part will supplement BMC’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, and also provide BMC the access to more than 13,000 service and asset management solution providers that enable IT organisations to improve the services they offer end users.
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EU to Establish European Cloud Partnership
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
The European Commission is to establish the European Cloud Partnership, which aims to bring together public sector organisations and the IT industry to work on commons requirements for cloud procurement, said Neelie Kroes, the vice-president of the EC with responsibility for Europe’s digital agenda.
Speaking at the European Cloud Partnership World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kroes promised that the commission would invest an initial €10m in the partnership. It will be set up in 2012 and its first results are expected the following year.
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Salesforce Announces Desk.com
Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, has unveiled Desk.com, revolutionizing customer service for a social and mobile world.
Desk.com enables businesses to deliver personal customer service by offering a help desk that is social, mobile and simple to use and deploy. Desk.com allows any business to instantly work with customers over any major social network. Desk.com Mobile allows companies to carry a help desk in their pocket and answer customers on the go.
“We built Desk.com so that every company can deliver personal customer service in a social and mobile world. Desk.com is social at its core; its mobile app instantly lets any employee, anywhere, deliver awesome customer service; and it can be deployed quickly and easily,” said Alex Bard, vice president and general manager, Desk.com.
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Select Committee Publishes Public Sector IT ‘Cartel’ Report
The public administration select committee has commended the government on making progress to tackle the well known problems associated with public sector IT, but warns it has not done enough to address concerns around skills, legacy equipment and allegations of “cartel-like” behaviour among suppliers.
The committee published a report in July 2011 entitled, A recipe for rip-offs: time for a new approach, that listed its concerns about the public sector’s overdependance on the same large IT providers, lack of ability to make any large-scale change to how it uses IT, and issues around skills and legacy equipment.
The committee has now published a progress report examining how far the issues raised by the original report have been addressed.
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HCL Announces 10,000 Local Jobs in US and Europe in the Next Five Years
HCL Technologies Ltd., a leading global IT services provider, has underlined its position as a socially responsible business by announcing a series of initiatives around building Glocal Centres of Excellence (GCoE) with the aim of creating 10,000 jobs in US and Europe in the next five years.
“As our unique Employees First culture has continued to grow and evolve, we’ve seen more and more HCL employees expressing the desire to see a truly socially responsible business model,” said Vineet Nayar, Vice Chairman & CEO, HCL Technologies. “Clearly, the need of the hour is growth and employment and we believe that this initiative will create unique business value for HCL while generating sustainable employment in local economies for years to come. It will need significant collaboration of all stakeholders; however, we do believe that it can be done and we are committed to backing this program with all our resources and best intent,” he added.
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MTN Extends Managed Services Partnership with Ericsson
MTN, a leading telecommunications company with a presence in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East, has announced the extension of its managed services agreement with Ericsson.
This announcement marks the extension of the first managed services contract between Ericsson and MTN, originally signed in 2009 in connection to the rollout of MTN’s 3G network in Ghana. Under the extension, Ericsson is responsible for network operations, field maintenance and optimization.
Jon Hoffmann, Chief Technical officer, MTN Ghana said, “Our first two years together achieved the results we were hoping for: we could focus on subscriber growth, and Ericsson delivered network reliability and efficiencies.”
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Atos Announces £74m Department of Health Contract
Atos, an international IT services company, has announced that it has been awarded a five year contract worth £74 million by the Department of Health. Under the contract, Atos will deliver an integrated IT desktop service plus a range of supporting services within the Department of Health (DH) and for some of its Arms Length Bodies.
A spokesperson for the DH said: “The procurement was conducted against the ASCC framework using an in-house team and has delivered a flexible contract that will result in savings of around 40% on the current cost of service across the life of the contract.”
The contract draws together the desktop solution for the Department and some of its Arms Length Bodies, such as, the Care Quality Commission, into a common, high-quality, integrated, shared service. It supports the aims of the Government Strategy for ICT, both in reducing costs and ensuring the necessary ICT is in place to deliver DH reforms and modernisation in 2012 and beyond.
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Serco Axes 800 Jobs After Consolidation
Monday, January 30, 2012
800 job cuts were yesterday as outsourcing giant Serco consolidated functions following a series of acquisitions and administrators of Thamesteel cut most of its workforce.
Serco, which delivers back-office support for a range of industries including banking, insurance, travel and healthcare, is merging its business processing operations into a single global division.
The move will be combined with an overhaul of its UK management structure.
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Connected Digital Economy Catapult Announced
The Technology Strategy Board has announced that it will establish a Catapult centre for the connected UK digital economy.
The new Catapult is a technology and innovation centre which will accelerate innovation and stimulate growth in this important area of the economy. It will bring together technological expertise to help the UK’s world-leading digital businesses to develop, test and apply new technologies, reducing the risk associated with creating hugely profitable products and services in the future. The centre may focus on areas such as:
- How digital media and content are traded and used - in order to find sustainable ways to help businesses co-operate to create profitable services;
- The pervasiveness of digital services - addressing the impact of new technologies and systems such as cloud computing and identity management, as businesses and industries become more digital;
- The blending of digital and physical worlds - looking at how our devices, clothes, cars and other consumer goods become better connected to enhance our physical lives.
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G4S Advisors Face Axe
The FTSE 100 security group G4S is set to replace its roster of corporate advisers and brokers this week as punishment for not buying the Danish cleaner ISS.
The chairman, Alf Duch-Pederson,has announced that he is to quit after the £5.2bn proposal, which would have made G4S the world’s biggest cleaning and security group with 1.2 million employees, failed to get shareholder support in November. However, the G4S board believes that it can only regain credibility by also axing some of the advisers on that deal.
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Indian Finance Minister Slams Obama’s Anti-outsourcing
Worried over the adverse fallout of protectionism, Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday said if the US stops outsourcing jobs to India, profitability of both the economies will be hurt.
Mukherjee said: “If the US stops outsourcing jobs from India to some extent profitability of the economies will be affected.”
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buyingTeam Becomes Proxima
buyingTeam, Europe’s leading provider of end-to-end procurement services, announces that it is to transition to a new brand and, from 20 February 2012, will be known as Proxima.
The move reflects the scope and range of services that the company now offers its portfolio of blue-chip, multi-national clients, driven by the growing importance that businesses place on procurement as a strategic corporate function in today’s challenging economic environment.
2012 also sees Proxima expanding its offering into the North American market. With some large outsourcing assignments already underway in the United States, Proxima has a platform from which to grow its presence in the market and translate its track record of delivery for clients on both sides of the Atlantic.
Matthew Eatough, CEO, Proxima, said: “Over the years we have evolved along with our clients to reach this market leading position and gain their trust as an advisor. Changing our name to Proxima reflects that progress and our ambitions for the future. Our growing portfolio of highly-respected clients is testament to the skills and experience of our people.”
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Uncertain Economic Conditions Impacting Outsourcing Market, KPMG Survey
Friday, January 27, 2012
A mixed global economic outlook, high levels of volatility, weak consumer demand, and ongoing corporate uncertainty continue to impact outsourcing demand and consulting growth, according to the KPMG 4Q11 Sourcing Advisory Pulse Survey of KPMG field advisors and leading global business and IT service providers.
The study also found that organisations engaged in outsourcing are recognizing the need to invest in IT-enabled solutions, but must overhaul business and operating models to fully exploit the technologies’ potential.
“Buyers are placing great emphasis on investing in IT, but given the economic uncertainty, all efforts undertaken will occur under watchful, cost conscious eyes,” said Stan Lepeak, global research director in KPMG’s Management Consulting Group. “Buyers and providers are smarter, more experienced, and less likely to enter into larger and more risky deals, and evolutionary innovations such as cloud computing and targeted BPO are changing the nature of what constitutes outsourcing.”
Some 73 percent of advisors and 79 percent of providers polled cited the weak economy as likely having the biggest impact on buyer businesses and operations, especially in Europe.
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Illumina Half Shares to Block Roche’s Hostile Takeover Offer
Illumina Inc. is granting investors the right to buy shares at half the price in a so-called poison- pill defense, following Roche Holding AG’s hostile $5.7 billion bid for the maker of gene-mapping tools.
Shareholders will receive one preferred stock purchase right as a dividend for each common share held as of the close of business Feb. 6, San Diego-based Illumina said in a statement. Investors will also have the right to purchase $550 in common shares for $275, or, assuming a price of $55 a share, 10 common shares at that price. The rights won’t be exercisable initially, Illumina said. The strategy can block an unwanted bid by making it prohibitively expensive.
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Intel to Buy Patents and Next Generation Video Codec Software From RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. has announced that it has signed an agreement to sell a significant number of its patents and its next generation video codec software to Intel Corporation for a purchase price of $120 million. Under terms of the sale, RealNetworks retains certain rights to continue to use the patents in current and future products.
“Selling these patents to Intel unlocks some of the substantial and unrealized value of RealNetworks assets,” said Thomas Nielsen, RealNetworks President and CEO. “It represents an extraordinary opportunity for us to generate additional capital to boost investments in new businesses and markets while still protecting our existing business.
“RealNetworks is pleased Intel has agreed to acquire our next generation video codec software and team,” said Nielsen. “Intel has a strong reputation as a technology innovator, and we believe they are well positioned to build on the development work and investment we’ve made in this area.”
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West Midlands Police Tenders For £3.5bn Shared Services Deal
West Midlands Police, along with Surrey Police Force, has issued a tender to deliver a “cutting edge approach” through a seven year shared service deal.
The forces are hoping others will come on board the initiative which could see spending rise to £3.5bn.
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Serco Awarded Contracts for Support Services to the UK’s Royal Air Force and Naval Air Command
Serco, the international service company, has announced that it has been awarded a number of contracts providing a range of operational support, engineering and training services, known as Multi-Activity Contracts (MACs). The contracts to the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) and Naval Air Command have a combined total potential value to Serco of £130m.
Serco has successfully rebid its RAF Northolt MAC, providing aviation and engineering facilities and logistics support at this major RAF airport, including maintenance and associated support of 32 (The Royal) Squadron, and at various satellite stations in and around London. The contract commences in April 2012, is for a threeyear period with options to extend by up to a further four years and would have a total value to Serco of approximately £70m over the full seven years.
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Vodafone and Teleperformance Announce Partnership in Newark
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Vodafone and Teleperformance, a UK leader in outsourced customer services, have announced a new strategic partnership which will see Teleperformance taking on some of the work currently managed at Vodafone’s Newark contact centre.
This new partnership will see the transfer of 207 roles in three of Vodafone’s specialist operations team to Teleperformance. This will mean continuous employment for these individuals with the same terms and conditions.
Teleperformance has been chosen for their experience and expertise as a leader in the provision of customer services in the business sector. The partnership underlines the importance of Vodafone’s operations in Newark and our commitment to provide the best service for all business customers.
Alistair Niederer, CEO of Teleperformance said: “This will be a true collaboration with Vodafone and the partnership will ensure a great future for the Newark contact centre and the services we can provide for business customers. We look forward to welcoming our new colleagues over the coming months.”
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Capita Create Additonal 40 Jobs in Moray Contact Centre
Outsourcing company Capita has confirmed it is to create a further 40 jobs at its contact centre in Moray.
The new roles come on top of 100 jobs announced by the company in November, as they expand their operations in Forres.
The latest posts range from customer services to senior management positions.
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Rhapsody Acquires Napster’s European Operation
Rhapsody has acquired Napster’s European operation, marking the music streaming service’s first move beyond the US market and kicking off a battle with Spotify.
The US service, which has only been available to American customers for the past 11 years, has reached a deal to acquire Napster International’s subscription music business.
The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will see Rhapsody launch in the UK and Germany under the Napster brand name and take the fight to the increasingly popular Spotify.
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UK’s Biggest Pub & Restaurant Operator Goes Cloud
The company that owns Harvester, O’Neills and Toby Carvery is rolling out cloud computing across the whole group. Mitchells & Butlers, the largest restaurant and pub operator in the UK, has partnered with Fujitsu to extend networked SaaS to its 1,600 branches.
Mike Sackman, chief information officer at Mitchells & Butlers said:
“Customers will be able to book tables, and place orders including takeaways from their smartphones, and access public wifi in our branches. There is a revolution in what our customers want to be able to do with their own technology. We will also be able to offer much more personalised promotion and marketing to them.”
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Npower Creates 200 New Jobs in North East
npower has created 200 new positions in the north east, and hopes to fill them by the end of March. The call centre jobs are available in: Peterlee, Houghton le Spring and Thornaby.
Paul Robinson, head of npower’s contact centres, said: “We have noticed a significant increase in demand from our customers which is why we are growing our contact centres. These jobs are designed to bolster our team and ensure we can deliver the very best service to customers. We hope to attract a wide variety of applicants from across the region. This is also great news for the North East with the creation of 200 new jobs at a time when a number of organisations are reducing the size of their workforces.”
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Mushroom Player Goes For ITO Deal
Monaghan Mushrooms has signed a two-year deal with Belfast IT and business process outsourcing firm Equiniti ICS. The contract concerns off-shore software development support and will be delivered from centres in Northern Ireland and India. Outsourcing is expected to play a major part in the growth of the Irish mushroom producer.
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Quindell Plans to Buy Injury Specialist Silverbeck Rymer
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Software and outsourcing firm Quindell Portfolio has announced plans to buy personal injury specialist Silverbeck Rymer and combine it with its claims and Mobile Doctors business to provide a joint outsourcing offering to the UK insurance claims market.
The proposed acquisition, which values Silverbeck Rymer at £19.31m, involves £10.25m in cash and the issue of up to 120.8 million Quindell shares at 7.5p each, which will be subject to lock in arrangements ranging from 12 to 36 months.
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Apple Reports Record-Breaking Q4 Profits of $13.06bn
Apple reported record-breaking net profits for the three months to 31 December 2011 of $13.06bn (£8.36bn).
This figure is up 118% from the same period in 2010.
The company also sold 37 million iPhones, more than twice as many as it sold in the last quarter of 2010.
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UK Economic Activity Shrinks by 0.2%
UK economic activity shrank by 0.2% in the last three months of last year according to official figures.
It marks a sharp drop in economic activity from the third quarter of 2011, when gross domestic product (gdp) expanded by 0.6%.
The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), are a preliminary estimate, which could be revised either up or down by 0.2%.
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Obama Steps Up Campaign Against Outsourcing in State of the Union Address
Stepping up his campaign against outsourcing, US President Barack Obama announced a series of measures that would offer incentives to those firms which will create jobs in the country, a move that may also affect companies in India.
“If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it,” Obama said in his State of the Union Address during which he presented an economic blueprint aiming to take his country away from outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits.
Many of his proposals centred on changes to the tax code, including limiting deductions for companies that move jobs overseas, rewarding companies that return jobs to the United States and increasing taxes on wealthy Americans.
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Twitter Acquires Security Firm Dasient
“Effective immediately, we will be bringing our technology, tools, and team to the revenue engineering team at Twitter,” Dasient wrote on its company blog.
Known for its anti-malware platform, which can scan web addresses to assess the presence of harmful content, Dasient represents Twitter’s second web security acquisition in three months. In November, Twitter bought Whisper Systems, an encryption startup that originally built encryption software for Android.
The purchase of Dasient is the latest sign of San Francisc0-based Twitter’s growing dedication to online security, an issue that the company had skimped on in the past. Along with its web address analysis products, Dasient has also created a service that can hunt down malicious online advertising to protect the ads and content of customer websites.
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Newport City Council Saves £90,000 in Print Costs with Xerox Managed Print Services
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Newport City Council (NCC) has cut its print-related costs by more than 25 per cent, resulting in nearly £90,000 savings, by applying the same Managed Print Service (MPS) tools and techniques Xerox uses to save millions for large enterprises.
NCC is undergoing a major IT transformation initiative focused on improving technology infrastructure across its 50+ sites to increase business efficiency and support flexible working practices. Xerox’s managed print service is helping the council realise this vision and has also helped significantly reduce the IT support resources required and lower direct printing costs.
More than 3,000 NCC staff can now print and collect documents, scan to email, or network to any device across the council’s 50 sites, helping improve efficiency and security, and reducing waste. To further support flexible working practices, NCC is piloting a mobile print solution with Xerox with a view to a wider roll out.
“NCC employees can now print from any supported location. A more flexible working environment is just what we need for our increasingly agile workforce,” said Mark Neilson, NCC head of customer and information services. “The project has other benefits, too. We have significantly reduced the administration costs of processing invoices and ordering consumables for our printers – not to mention the savings we derive from less waste paper and power consumption.”
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Large Contracts Lift European Outsourcing Market to All-Time High
Information Services Group, a leading technology insights, market intelligence and advisory services company, has released data showing a surge of large contracts in the fourth quarter lifted the outsourcing market in Europe, the Middle East & Africa (EMEA) to a record performance for 2011.
The 4Q11 EMEA TPI Index, which measures contracts valued at €20 million or more, found fourth-quarter total contract value (TCV) in the region reached €13.4 million, an increase of 17 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 and 12 percent from the third quarter of 2011. Four of the global market’s five fourth-quarter mega-deals – contracts valued at €800 million or more – were awarded in EMEA.
For the year, the region recorded TCV of €44 billion, an all-time high and an increase of 27 percent on 2010. The number of contracts awarded also set a record, mirroring a trend in the other regions of the world. Globally, EMEA accounted for more than 60 percent of the market’s value, half of all contracts awarded and eight of the ten mega-deals signed.
“This region had a substantial impact on the performance of the global market both in the fourth quarter and in 2011,” said Duncan Aitchison, Partner & President, ISG North Europe. “The growth we saw was largely the result of significant mega-deal activity as well as large contract awards in the historically less robust outsourcing markets, particularly France, Southern Europe and the Middle East.”
The TPI Index, presented by ISG, provides a quarterly snapshot of the sourcing industry for clients, service providers, analysts and the media. Now in its 37th consecutive quarter, it is the industry’s authoritative source for marketplace intelligence related to outsourcing transaction structures and terms, industry adoption, geographic prevalence and service provider metrics.
The 4Q11 EMEA TPI Index recorded a return of demand in the private sector in the United Kingdom, which saw a 15 percent increase in contract numbers year-on-year and 40 percent in TCV.
By scope, IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) both recorded their highest-ever TCV and contracting activity in the region in 2011. ITO TCV grew for the third consecutive year, reaching €31 billion, while BPO TCV more than doubled to €13 billion on the strength of three mega-deals. The number of BPO contracts awarded in 2011 increased by 37 percent compared to the previous year.
All of the major industry groups in the region performed strongly in 2011. Financial Services saw its best year ever in EMEA, both in terms of contract signings and value, recording a TCV €13.4 billion. Manufacturing TCV of $13.2 billion was also near its high-water mark.
“Looking at the year ahead, it seems likely that the EMEA market will maintain its pace in terms of numbers of contracts but may find it challenging to match its 2011TCV, which was buoyed by exceptionally large transactions,” Aitchison said. “The economic volatility in Europe and continuing uncertainties surrounding the euro, however, could still change profoundly the shape and scale of outsourcing demand in the region.”
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Ant’s Contact Centre Opens in Sheffield
Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg has opened a £2m contact centre in Sheffield, which is set to create jobs over the next year.
It is Ant’s fourth contact centre, and will create 200 new jobs over the next 12 months, making the company one of the region’s largest employer.
Acquisition and refurbishment of the facility was backed by Santander Corporate Banking. The new premises will deliver outbound sales and customer service for some of today’s household names including British Gas.
Mr Clegg commented: “Ant is going from strength to strength and these 200 jobs are a big boost for Sheffield. I am always glad to see Sheffield companies grow and everyone at Ant should be very proud of their success.”
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DWP Awards Five-year £316m Desktop Contract to HP
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has awarded a significant desktop management contract to HP under the Desktop 21 framework agreement.
The five-year £316m Desktop 21 deal covers a range of desktop services including security, print, service desk and device provision and support, and will see the DWP move to HP’s WorkPlace360 desktop management platform from 2013.
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Andy Nelson Announced as Government’s New CIO
Nelson will hold the post alongside his existing position as the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) CIO and will take over from Joe Harley, who will be retiring from the civil service at the end of March.
Nelson has been heavily involved in the government’s cloud computing plans over the last year.
Commenting on the appointment, Ian Watmore, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, said: “It is fantastic to be able to assign the role of government CIO to someone who has held major CIO roles in private sector and has been involved in the ICT strategy since the very beginning. Andy has worked closely with Joe over the past months and will continue to do so – ensuring that we continue to deliver ICT services fit for a modern civil service.”
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CSC and Proximetry to Deliver First Smart Grid Network Management Cloud Service for Utilities
Monday, January 23, 2012
CSC announced that it is collaborating with leading wireless network and performance management software provider Proximetry to leverage its AirSync™ platform as the foundation of a first-of-its-kind smart grid network management cloud service.
For utility operators seeking to proactively and efficiently manage their smart grid communication networks, CSC’s AirSync Cloud offering provides network management to multi-vendor, multi-radio public and private networks that is secure, reliable and highly-available. The solution, initially to be offered in the United States with future markets launching later in 2012, will be hosted from CSC’s industry-leading trusted cloud data centers.
“In the age of instant information, rapid response and smart devices, utilities must have an unprecedented level of expertise in managing the change impacting communication networks,” said Jill Feblowitz, vice president, IDC Energy Insights. “Agility, flexibility and the degree to which they’re equipped to extend the same network communication service levels provided in the data center to the grid transformation — with the right people, processes and technologies — will determine when and how well the benefits of the smart grid will gain traction.”
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Edinburgh Abandons £170m Mitie Contract
Edinburgh councillors have voted down a proposal to outsource a raft of facilities management services to Mitie.
A report recommending the outsourcing of 2,000 jobs in a seven-year deal worth £170m to Mitie was rejected by councillors when it came to the final vote.
Councillors voted to terminate the procurement process without any contract award.
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IBM Reports 2011 Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results
IBM has announced fourth-quarter 2011 diluted earnings of $4.62 per share, compared with diluted earnings of $4.18 per share in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 11 percent. Operating (non-GAAP) diluted earnings were $4.71 per share, compared with operating diluted earnings of $4.25 per share in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 11 percent.
Fourth-quarter net income was $5.5 billion compared with $5.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 4 percent. Operating (non-GAAP) net income was $5.6 billion compared with $5.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 5 percent.
Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2011 of $29.5 billion increased 2 percent (1 percent, adjusting for currency) from the fourth quarter of 2010. While currency provided a benefit to revenue growth of approximately 25 basis points in the quarter, currency movements since the company announced its third-quarter earnings in October impacted fourth-quarter revenue by approximately one point of growth, or $300 million.
“We had a strong fourth-quarter performance, capping a year of record earnings per share, revenue, profit and free cash flow,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM president and chief executive officer. “We delivered outstanding results in all four of our strategic initiatives for the quarter and the year, as we continued to realize the benefit of our long-term investments in growth markets, business analytics, Smarter Planet solutions and cloud. We are well on track toward our long-term roadmap for operating earnings per share of at least $20 in 2015.”
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Fujitsu Ends Unite Industrial Action
Unite has ended industrial action at Fujitsu after union members accepted a new offer from the IT giant.
The union welcomed the agreement, which ends a long running dispute that has affected sites in Crewe and Manchester since June last year.
Unite national officer for IT and communications Kevin O’Gallagher said: “The agreement reflects a significant improvement in relationships with the company since last year. It means better protection for pensions for Fujitsu employees across the UK and pay rises for most Manchester staff. There is a renewed commitment to work together through our agreements which can help avoid conflict in future.
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Essex Police Awards Northgate £32m Crime Management Contact
Essex police authority has awarded a £32m deal for crime management systems to Northgate Information Solutions.
The framework agreement contract will see Northgate supply, install and maintain an investigation management, intelligence and defendant management IT system for Essex and a number of other police authorities, according to a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).
The 10-year agreement will be open to all police authorities and other law enforcement agencies within the UK, although eight police authorities are expected to be among the early adopters: Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, City of London police and Kent police
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Taylor Wimpey Renews Five Year IT Outsourcing Contract with Logica
Friday, January 20, 2012
Logica, a leading business and technology service company, has announced that Taylor Wimpey, one of the largest homebuilders in the UK, has renewed its IT outsourcing contract with Logica for another five years, in a deal worth £15.2 million. Taylor Wimpey has been a Logica customer for nine years and this new deal will see the relationship extend to 2016.
Logica will provide outsourcing of IT infrastructure management, technical applications support, managed testing and project delivery services for the UK house building business, with work taking place from Logica locations in the UK, India, and the Philippines.
Andy Feldon, CIO for Taylor Wimpey said, “We chose to renew our contract for another 5 years following a thorough external benchmarking process, which not only confirmed value-for-money, but also positioned Logica as the right technical partner to work with Taylor Wimpey on its extensive programme of change.”
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Ladbrokes plc Buys Stake in Stadium Technology Group
Ladbrokes plc has signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Stadium Technology Group (“Stadium”) – a Las Vegas-based supplier of software and in-game betting applications to sportsbook operators.
Stadium supplies its innovative, licensed technology to a number of sportsbook and third party suppliers in Nevada and Delaware. The deal sees Ladbrokes enter the US market at a time when a number of states are exploring liberalising gambling.
Casinos that utilise Stadium software directly or through third party suppliers include: Atlantis, Cosmopolitan, Crystal Palace, Golden Nugget, Hard Rock, M Resort, Palazzo, Treasure Island and The Venetian.
Ladbrokes Chief Executive Richard Glynn commented: “The size of the US market and potential for positive regulatory change in the coming years make it a sensible place to establish a presence. Stadium Technology is already one of the key software suppliers to casinos in Nevada and Delaware and it has the potential to expand.”
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Skanska UK Signs Five-year Enterprise Agreement with Asite
Skanska UK has signed a five-year enterprise agreement with Asite for the use of Asite’s award winning collaborative Software as a Service technology (cSaaS). The deal sees Skanska implementing Asite’s eProcurement and supply chain integrations solutions throughout the entire organisation and across their supply chain relationships.
Asite’s technology will provide Skanska with a single integrated solution for the procurement process across their portfolio of construction and facilities management works. Both Skanska staff and their supply chain partners will use Asite eProcurement to manage their purchasing cycle including tendering, purchasing, delivery logistics and goods receipt, and payment processes. As part of the enterprise solution Asite will be closely integrating with Skanska’s back-office ERP system, Sage Intuita. By automating and streamlining the purchasing process, Asite’s technology significantly reduces transaction costs and will ensure that Skanska are furthering their aim of creating true partnerships with their supply chain.
Andy MacAskill, Skanska UK Supply Chain Director, said “We are delighted to be working with Asite as our platform provider to deliver eProcurement across our supply chain. Asite will be an important part of our vision to deliver a One Skanska best practice approach to the procurement of materials, products, services and subcontract packages throughout project lifecycles. The implementation of eProcurement will provide significant efficiency benefits to our supply chain and contribute to establishing Skanska as the leading construction procurer in the UK.”
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London Councils Tender for £1b Back-Office Deal
Westminister Council, on behalf on other councils, has put out a tender to outsource back-office functions, in a bid to improve efficiency and cut costs.
The tender is part of the Athena Programme, which is a pan-London initiative which aims to create a regional single ICT platform for public sector organisations.
The tender states: The Council, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (“the Tri-Borough Authorities”) have aligned themselves as strategic partners and have embarked on a number of different activities to streamline services and deliver savings. These activities include a programme of work looking at an outsourced service (including the hosting and where applicable the processing of transactions) of the back-office services which are the subject of this notice, namely, finance and procurement, HR and payroll, e-Sourcing, property asset data management and business intelligence (“back-office services”).
The Council is undertaking this procurement on behalf of itself and each of the other Tri-Borough Authorities and the following London Borough Councils: Bexley; Bromley; Camden; City of London Corporation; Ealing; Hackney; Hammersmith and Fulham; Hillingdon; Hounslow; Islington; Kensington and Chelsea; Kingston upon Thames; Newham; Richmond upon Thames; Southwark; Sutton; Tower Hamlets; Waltham Forest; Wandsworth, JVC (as defined below), any arms’ length management organisations, subsidiaries or other companies or businesses under the control or influence of any of the aforementioned London Boroughs and any Schools within the control of any of the aforementioned London Boroughs (each a “participating authority”). The Council will enter into the Framework on behalf of itself and each of the other participating authorities.
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Sony Ericsson Posts $207m Loss
Sony Ericsson has posted a net loss of €207m during the fourth quarter.
This loss is ahead of its buyout by Sony, as shipments of mobile units decreased by 20 per cent annually. The firm had posted an €8m profit in the previous quarter.
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Unilever and Lufthansa Systems Builds on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Platform
Thursday, January 19, 2012
In an online broadcast yesterday from Microsoft Corp. headquarters, Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, laid out how Microsoft’s private cloud solution will help businesses move faster, save money and better compete in 2012. He highlighted how companies, such as webcast participants Lufthansa Systems, T. Rowe Price and Unilever, can use Microsoft System Center 2012 to build and operate private clouds for the delivery of business applications across both private and public cloud platforms. System Center 2012 is available today in a Release Candidate as a single, integrated private cloud management solution for the first time.
“IT leaders tell me that private cloud computing promises to help them focus on innovation over maintenance, to streamline costs and to respond to the need for IT speed,” Nadella said. “We are delivering on that promise today. With System Center 2012, customers can move beyond the industry hype and speculation, and progress into the here and now of private cloud.”
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Genpact Awarded Contract Extension for Kimberly-Clark Financial & Accounting
Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process and technology management, has announced it has been awarded a three-year contract extension by global consumer product goods (CPG) leader Kimberly-Clark for comprehensive finance and accounting (F&A) services and high-end analytics.
Under this new agreement, which extends the five-year contract that expired in December 2011, Genpact will continue to help Kimberly-Clark increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its F&A operations as well as its key business capabilities such as trade promotion management and predictive analytics.
“Genpact’s solid F&A services, domain expertise in the CPG market, and high-end analytics have provided unique insight that has helped us drive efficiencies and increase operational effectiveness across multiple processes,” said Mark Buthman, senior vice president and chief financial officer, Kimberly-Clark. “We have a terrific relationship with Genpact and we look forward to extending our partnership and leveraging the increased bottom-line value it will bring to our business and our customers.”
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Axon Solutions Awarded DHSP HR and Finance Contract
The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland (DHSP) has awarded Axon Solutions a £20m contract to create efficiencies and streamline processes in its human resource and finance functions through the introduction of a shared services system.
DHSP is currently made up of ten separate organisations, which employ approximately 70,000 staff, where each has its own disparate organisational structures.
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Cognizant Unveils Automated Coupon Redemption Solution to Bring ‘Intelligent Store of the Future’
Cognizant , a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, has announced the availability of an Automated Coupon Redemption (ACR) solution, part of its IntelliStoreSM “intelligent store of the future” platform. Cognizant IntelliStoreSM ACR is designed to help retailers and manufacturers drive sales, reduce costs, improve customer loyalty, and enhance the shopper experience by integrating online, mobile, and in-store shopping.
Cognizant IntelliStore ACR is a cloud-based service offering that offers a way to embrace paperless digital coupons. Purchased as a service with minimal upfront cost and no in-store hardware, Cognizant IntelliStore ACR was created with Intelligent Clearing Network (ICN), an innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that electronically delivers and clears both digital and paper coupons through a single connection at the point of sale (POS). Manufacturers, media companies, and retailers receive real-time redemption information for digital and paper coupons the moment the incentive clears the POS system in grocery, drug, and mass-merchant retailers.
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Rosslyn Analytics Joins Qliktech’s Qonnect Partner Program for Technology Partners
QlikView and Rosslyn Analytics Join Forces to Help Businesses Accelerate Performance and Profitability with Contextual Enterprise Intelligence
New York and London – January 19, 2012 – Rosslyn Analytics, the global leader in cloud-based business intelligence-as-a-service (BIAS), has announced that it has joined QlikTech’s Qonnect Partner Program for Technology Partners.
This expanded partnership with QlikTech, a leader in Business Discovery – user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), enables QlikView customers to leverage Rosslyn Analytics’ award-winning cloud-based enterprise data services and analytics platform, RA.Pid, to make better and faster decisions by obtaining a contextual view of enterprise data in seconds.
The RA.Pid platform is a revolutionary step forward in enterprise information management. For the first time, individual decision-makers not only have direct access to consumer-like end-user friendly tools to extract and transform unstructured enterprise data into information in real-time but entire networks of business users have instant access to any information, at any time, from a single analytics platform featuring QlikView.
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INTTRA Selects Cognizant to Drive Operational Efficiencies
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
INTTRA Selects Cognizant to Drive Operational Efficiencies Across Global Ocean Freight and Ocean Supply Chains, and Provide a Uniform Experience Across Multiple Trading Partners
Cognizant, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, today announced it has been selected as a strategic partner by INTTRA, a leading provider of e-commerce solutions for the ocean freight industry, to streamline INTTRA’s applications and quality assurance portfolios. As part of the multi-year, multi-million dollar agreement, Cognizant will provide a range of application development, application maintenance, testing, and quality assurance services using the managed services model.
“The global ocean shipping industry is going through significant structural changes. Our goal is to provide the best and most useful products to our customers to help them streamline the processing of ocean freight, and optimize global ocean supply chains,” said Ivan Latanision, Senior Vice President of Product Management at INTTRA.
“In Cognizant, we found a strategic partner with the breadth of expertise and global footprint that would help us create products that will make a difference to our customers’ process efficiencies and positively impact their bottom lines. Specifically, we were impressed with their domain knowledge, process methodologies, the managed services model, and their roadmap to help us in our transformational journey to becoming a global information provider.”
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London NHS Organisations Share 2e2 Services Platform
London-based NHS organisations have signed a £4m contract for a managed ICT services platform with ICT service provider 2e2 for up to five years.
Haringey Community Services and NHS North Central London Cluster (the commissioning arms of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington PCT’s) are to share their ICT services platform with existing 2e2 shared services customers Camden PCT, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust and Islington PCT.
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Environment Agency Plans to Set Up Contact Centre
The Environment Agency is setting up a framework contract to provide a multimedia contact centre for its Floodline flood reporting and information service.
Other government departments will be able to use the framework for incident management and advice services, giving it an estimated value of between £1m and £25m.
According to the Official Journal of the European Union, the four-year fully outsourced arrangement will provide a contact centre services including a live agent call centre.
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Premier Foods to Cut 600 Staff
Premier Foods to shed about 600 staff to cut costs Premier Foods has struggled despite owning major brands including Mr Kipling.
Premier Foods has announced plans to sell off non-core businesses and cut about 600 staff in an attempt to double cost savings to £40m a year.
The firm behind brands including Paxo and Mr Kipling is to make about 5% of its 12,000 workforce redundant.
Its current cost-saving target of £20m is to be doubled by 2013, as it expects 2011’s results to be at the “lower end” of market expectations
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G4S Cash Solutions Secures Five Year Contract With Leading ATM Provider YourCash
G4S Cash Solutions, the largest provider of cash solutions in the UK, has been awarded a multi-million pound contract with leading independent European ATM provider, YourCash Ltd.
The contract, which will commence in January 2012 and run for a five year period, will see G4S provide ATM replenishments and engineering services to 300 ATMs across the UK, 250 of which are located within the country wide network of one of the market leading petrol forecourt providers.
The partnership with G4S will give YourCash Ltd a single solution to managing its cash processes, allowing for a more efficient and effective cash management mechanism.
Steve Pearson, Account Manager, G4S Cash Solutions (UK), said, “We are looking forward to working with the team at YourCash, adding value and support to their growth strategy in the coming years. As industry leaders in cash management solutions G4S is uniquely positioned to identify and introduce process efficiencies such as those designed for YourCash, whilst continuing to provide the highest possible levels of service. ”
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National Outsourcing Association Welcomes New Board Members
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
The National Outsourcing Association (NOA) has welcomed three new board members. Lauren Tennant (National Trust) Debra Maxwell (arvato) and Paul Robb (independent consultant) all took office as board members of the UK trade body that promotes successful outsourcing for the benefit of end-users and alike. This follows their respective victories in elections held late last year.
NOA Chairman Martyn Hart said: “We are delighted to welcome fresh blood onto the NOA board. All the new members have a wealth of valuable experience, with the potential to make a huge impact in spreading best practice in their respective areas.”
The incoming board members are:
Board Member for International – Debra Maxwell of arvato
Debra will lead the international direction of the NOA by promoting best practice, service excellence and innovation internationally, and fostering a greater understanding of offshoring. This will include liaising with other trade bodies, interest groups and embassies, developing external links for the NOA with outsourcing activities in the Middle East, China, India and Europe.
Debra said: “It’s a real honour to be appointed to the NOA board and I’m excited about helping to position the UK as a key hub in international outsourcing. Much of the innovation and best practice in international outsourcing is led from the UK, so we should be at forefront of the debate.”
Board Members for End-Users – Lauren Tennant of the National Trust
Representing the interests of major end users, Lauren will work with the two other end user representatives on the board to shape NOA strategy to make sure that end-users requirements are met. Her current role with the National Trust sees her taking responsibility for the contractual, commercial and operational performance of some of the National Trust’s key strategic outsourcing relationships with world-leading BPO partners.
Lauren said: “I will champion the voice of the end user by reviewing traditional thinking on outsourcing, collaboration, partnerships and transformation. I bring a fresh approach, with wide experience and innovative new thinking.”
Board Member for Public Services – Paul Robb (independent consultant)
This is a new role, focusing on our Public Sector members and ensuring that the NOA reflects their requirements and is closely aligned to the work of the All Party Group on Outsourcing & Shared Services. Paul has previously been involved with the NOA board as Board Member for Major Suppliers.
Paul said: “The NOA has a key role to play in promoting a clear understanding and dialogue between industry, the public sector and the community at large as well as demonstrating best practice and ensuring transparency for the outsourcing industry as a whole. I believe the depth and breadth of my experience will ensure that the NOA is best placed to achieve these objectives.”
Outgoing board members are Andrew Dunlop and Steve Briggs. The NOA would like to thank them for all their hard work and wishes them the very best in the future.
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National Grid Seeks Partner for Analytics Project
National Grid is seeking to contract with one or more vendors to support its Strategic asset management (SAM) programme through the provision of advanced analytics and visualisation tools, leveraging the existing capability of its enterprise systems, eg: enterprise asset management (EAM), enterprise content management (ECM).
The tender states: ‘National Grid is facing significant challenges in the form of changes to energy sourcing and demand patterns, ageing assets and dramatically increasing investment volumes. Business response to these challenges is driving increasing requirements for IT capabilities. Current bespoke tactical solutions within Transmission have demonstrated the value that can be achieved, but are limited both functionally and technically and are not cost effective to maintain.’
SAM will deliver an integrated infrastructure, data storage, analysis and reporting tools. The SAM implementation will provide an integrated platform that will support the future growth in transmission activities, facilitating faster deployment and avoiding bespoke development of IT systems.
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RBS Agrees to Sell Aircraft Leasing Unit to Sumitomo for $7.3bn
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has agreed to sell its aircraft leasing division to Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group for $7.3bn (£4.7bn).
The sale represents the biggest single disposal of assets by RBS since it was rescued by the UK taxpayer in 2008.
The bank had been in talks with a number of buyers for months.
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ADP Announces Acquisition of Randstad’s Payroll Business in India
ADP®, a leading provider of human resource outsourcing, payroll services, tax and compliance services, benefits administration and accounts payable solutions, has announced that it has acquired the Indian payroll business of Randstad Holding nv, NYSE Euronext Amsterdam, from its Indian subsidiary Ma Foi Randstad. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Ma Foi Consulting Solutions Ltd., the Indian company acquired by ADP from Ma Foi Randstad, offers managed payroll services and social benefits administration to clients across India through a fully customized payroll engine. The company uses this platform to serve approximately 350 brand-name multinational and domestic clients. As part of the transaction, ADP will take on a team of over 200 new associates.
Mark Benjamin, President, ADP Employer Services International, commented, “I am very pleased to take our longstanding partnership with Ma Foi to the ownership phase. ADP’s acquisition of Ma Foi Consulting Solutions gives us a direct presence in the large and developing Indian market for HR BPO. This acquisition also enhances our ability to meet the needs of our large multinational clients with operations in India, whom we serve through our ADP Streamline and GlobalView® solutions.”
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Former CIO Vivek Kundra Appointed Salesforce.com VP
Former CIO of U.S. federal government and author of U.S. Cloud-First policy to further the social enterprise with salesforce.com
Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, has announced that Vivek Kundra has joined the company as executive vice president of emerging markets. Kundra is an accomplished technology leader with a demonstrated track record of driving innovation.
As the first Chief Information Officer of the United States, Kundra managed more than $80 billion in technology investments at one of the world’s largest information technology organizations. He was an early evangelist of the benefits of cloud computing in the public sector. Kundra authored the groundbreaking Cloud-First policy, which now serves as a model for government IT organizations around the world seeking to increase efficiencies with less resources.
“Vivek Kundra is an amazing technology visionary who opened the eyes of millions to the transformational power of cloud computing,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “His disruptive leadership is just what the industry needs to accelerate the social enterprise.”
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Ericsson Completes Acquisition of Telcordia
Monday, January 16, 2012
Ericsson has completed the acquisition of Telcordia, a global leader in the development of mobile, broadband and enterprise communications software and services, for USD 1.15 billion in an all cash transaction, on a cash and debt-free basis. Telcordia is now part of the Ericsson Group and its approximately 2,600 skilled employees have joined Ericsson.
Today`s closing follows the announcement on June 14, 2011, that Ericsson had entered into a merger agreement with Providence Equity Partners, LLC and Warburg Pincus to acquire 100 percent of the shares of Telcordia.
Per Borgklint, Head of Ericsson`s business unit Multimedia, says: “The addition of Telcordia`s skilled people and knowledge, a good multi vendor product portfolio and an important customer base in North America, complement Ericsson`s already established position in the OSS/BSS space.”
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Telefónica Germany and Deutsche Telekom Agree Network Cooperation Deal
Telefónica Germany is set to use parts of Deutsche Telekom’s network infrastructure in future. The two companies have signed a long-term deal which will see Telekom connect up to 2,000 of Telefónica’s points of concentration via fibre optics in the next few years. This will allow the O2 mobile network to transmit data at even greater speeds and higher capacity.
Using leased lines from Telekom will enable Telefónica Germany to link up the first mobile phone masts to its core network via high-speed data channels as early as the second quarter of 2012. Telefónica Germany will also be able to increase its transmission rates at UMTS and LTE sites significantly in the coming years.
“The agreement with Telekom gives us the chance to operate cost-efficiently, quickly and flexibly in the rapidly growing market for mobile data”, says Telefónica Germany CEO René Schuster. “So we can offer the best quality in one of the most high-tech mobile networks in Europe.” Niek Jan van Damme, Telekom board member responsible for German business, points out: “To be able to exploit synergies in broadband expansion, network operators have to work together. And Telekom is willing to do that”.
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Mitie Set to Win Edinburgh Service Contract
Mitie set to win a £170 million contract to provide services ranging from cooking school meals to maintaining buildings for the City of Edinburgh Council.
The outsourcing specialist beat off competition from other private sector players including Capita and Carillion to be appointed preferred bidder to deliver Integrated Facilities Management services for seven years.
In a report prepared for the council, its chief executive Sue Bruce said a “compelling business case” existed to adopt a partnership model with the preferred bidder.
The council expects the proposal developed by Mitie to generate £51.5m of savings over the term of the contract. It said this will provide an additional £13.5m of savings compared with those offered under a plan to improve the delivery of services while keeping them inhouse.
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arvato Named as Exclusive E-commerce Distributor for Sony Music in the UK and Ireland
Sony Music UK has selected arvato as its exclusive e-commerce distribution partner in the UK and Ireland. Under the agreement arvato will provide supply chain services for Sony’s premium consumer offerings, such as music and exclusive merchandise from its MyPlay Direct artist stores.
The three year partnership includes warehousing and direct to consumer (D2C) distribution for hundreds of thousands of orders. These services and a comprehensive returns management programme will be managed from arvato’s 16,500 square-metre distribution facility in Milton Keynes.
arvato was selected due to its proven expertise and experience in the music and entertainment industry, along with its innovative approach to new channels. The appointment expands arvato’s existing six year supply chain and commercial order to cash service relationship with Sony, which has contributed to the business process outsourcing partner becoming the leading distributor of CDs in the UK.
“arvato has the necessary expertise and flexibility to adapt to our evolving needs in market undergoing significant change. This is especially important when it comes to delivering premium products directly to consumers, who expect a premium service,” said Stuart Hale-Brown, Vice President Operations, Sony Music UK. “The dedication from the team has really helped us in the transition of the e-commerce business. We look forward to working with arvato and incorporating its innovative solutions to drive our business forward.”
“Our existing relationship with Sony means we can leverage the B2B stockholding, providing higher stock availability, a shorter turnaround time of e-commerce orders and reduced replenishment costs,” explained Markus Schmücker, Managing Director, Supply Chain Solutions, arvato UK & Ireland.
“E-commerce is now a critical part of our supply chain growth strategy in the UK as we expand our capacity to meet client and consumer demand. We offer companies an innovative, collaborative and scalable approach to create a seamless consumer experience.”
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Nick Clegg Plans More Employee Ownership
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has championed the cause of employee share ownership, saying it will improve productivity and unlock growth.
He told an audience in the City that the government planned to cut red tape, and reform the tax system to accommodate employee ownership.
It is hoped the measures will create what he called a “John Lewis economy”.
Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said Mr Clegg was following Labour’s lead on responsible capitalism. Department store group John Lewis is owned by its employees and distributes its profits between them.
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Critical IT Still Not Aligned to Business Objectives Say CIOs
Friday, January 13, 2012
Companies are still not fully aligning IT strategies with business objectives, despite recognising the critical role IT has to play, according to new research* from BT Engage IT, the IT services division of BT Business.
More than a third (35 per cent) of CIOs questioned by independent research agency Vanson Bourne believed that their board thought that IT was critical to the success of their businesses, but only three per cent said that their IT is fully aligned to their organisation’s business objectives. Surprisingly, seven per cent reported that IT and business objectives are completely separate.
Financial services companies topped the list, with more than half of CIOs (52 per cent) believing their IT strategies and business objectives are well or exactly aligned, with almost a third (32 per cent) seeing alignment on new implementations and projects. This correlates with how the CIOs believed their board feel about IT, with more than half (56 per cent) claiming it is viewed as critical to the success of the business.
Interestingly, four per cent of respondents from financial services companies didn’t know if their IT and business objectives were aligned or not.
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TPI, Compass, STA Consulting Combine Form Information Services Group
ISG offers clients single source research, consulting, managed services to achieve operational excellence.
Information Services Group, Inc., a leading technology insights, market intelligence and advisory services company, today announced the merging of its individual corporate brands into one globally integrated business under the ISG brand.
The three market leaders: TPI, the world’s leading sourcing data and advisory firm; Compass, a premier independent provider of business and IT benchmarking; and STA Consulting, a premier independent technology advisory serving the North America public sector, will join together under ISG. The merger is designed to offer clients one source to drive operational excellence in their organizations.
The newly merged company will enhance the support given to private and public sector organizations to transform and optimize their operational environments through research, benchmarking, consulting and managed services, with a focus on information technology, business process transformation, program management services and enterprise resource planning.
“We started our journey five years ago to create an industry-leading, high growth, information-based company and we have been solidly on that path since then.” said Michael P. Connors, Chairman and CEO of ISG. “Uniting our capabilities under the ISG brand is a natural evolution and will increase the value we bring to clients. We will be unrivaled in providing substantial, sustainable and quantifiable improvements in their business operations from an independent, objective and trusted adviser.”
Connors added: “We entered 2012 with momentum from 2011. We saw continued strong demand for our services and our success in keeping existing and attracting new clients. We believe this strategy will enable ISG to continue to grow our business, add new talent to our firm and significantly increase shareholder value.”
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President Obama Praises Ford’s Use of ‘Insourcing’
President Barack Obama held up Ford Motor Co. as an example of companies contributing to the economy by bringing jobs back into the U.S. — and they should be rewarded for their efforts.
“You’ve heard of outsourcing. Well, these companies are insourcing,” Obama said Wednesday in a speech, surrounded by business executives, state and local officials and union leaders.
Ford plans to invest $16 billion in the U.S. by 2015, he said. “And that includes bringing back about 2,000 jobs” into the country.
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Barclays to Cut 422 Technology Staff
Barclays Plc is to cut up to 422 staff in technology support. This is after thousands of redundancies were announced by rival Royal Bank of Scotland.
Barclays said the cuts are due to a restructuring of its technology and infrastructure division and most of the jobs affected are in Britain, with some overseas. It said it will attempt to redeploy staff and limit compulsory redundancies.
Unite union slammed the cuts and the bank’s decision to move some of the roles to Lithuania.
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Staples Europe Selects BT as its Primary European Network Services Provider
BT announced a four-year networked IT services contract with Staples, the world’s largest office products company serving businesses and consumers in 26 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The contract provides Staples with a cost-effective, highly resilient network connecting 325 offices and stores across seven European countries into a single, secure wide area network (WAN) environment.
Kevin Milliken, senior vice-president and head of Information Technology at Staples, Europe said: “We are working towards one single, European wide-area network connecting all our offices and stores across Europe. We chose BT as our primary European supplier because of their reliability, flexibility and ability to offer us a high-bandwidth, cost-effective wide area network – regardless of underlying technology or office location. Based on our track-record with BT, I am confident we have chosen the right network partner.”
Edwin Hageman, CEO BT Benelux: “I am pleased to announce this contract with Staples. The pan-European scope of the services once again confirms our strength in delivering international networked IT services, wherever our customers want us to go. It also underlines the continued investment we’re making in our network and services to offer our customers industry leading technology and support.”
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Philippines Trade and Industry Secretary Alarmed by US Anti-outsourcing Bill
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Philippines Trade and Industry Secretary Gregory L. Domingo is alarmed by the anti-outsourcing sentiment in the Obama administration even as he vowed to mount a strong lobby in the US Congress against a proposed bill that seeks to ban outsourcing and offshoring activities of American companies of their non-core functions to other countries including the Philippines.
“We are very concerned about it and we will lobby in the US Congress primarily through our embassy led by Ambassador Jose Cuisia Jr. and also through the Filipino communities in the US,” Domingo said.
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Spanish Bank BBVA Switches to Google Software
Spanish banking giant BBVA is switching its 110,000 staff to use Google’s range of enterprise software.
The deal is the biggest that the search giant has signed with one company for its cloud-computing services, where software is offered as a service via the internet.
The bank told the BBC it would use Google’s tools only for internal communication.
But the deal can be seen as a breakthrough in corporate adoption.
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MITIE Acquires Leading Energy Specialist Utilyx
MITIE Group PLC, the strategic outsourcing and energy services company, has announced that it has acquired the leading energy and carbon management specialist Utilyx Holdings Limited.
Utilyx provides a number of services relating to its clients’ energy demands including strategic planning, procurement and risk management, all of which are designed to manage the business impact of energy consumption and rising energy costs.
MITIE is ranked as the second largest energy services company in the UK, providing a full range of integrated services that help its clients manage their energy use and carbon footprint. MITIE’s energy services proposition supports all the key energy issues facing businesses and public sector organisations across the UK.
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Co-op Bank Renews IT Steria Contract
The Co-operative Bank has renewed an IT services contract with Steria, as it continues on a £700 million transformation programme.
The bank said the all-encompassing deal - for which a value has not been disclosed - will now run until 2014. The original agreement was signed in 1995, and is aimed at cutting costs and improving processes.
Jim Slack, IT operations and development head at Co-operative Banking Group, said the contract had so far delivered “many successful business-critical projects and services, including a number of highly strategic undertakings”.
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ICT Deleted From GCSE Curriculum
The current information and communications technology (ICT) curriculum in England’s schools is a “mess” and will be radically revamped, the education secretary has announced.
From September it will be replaced by a flexible curriculum in computer science and programming, designed with the help of universities and industry.
“Technology in schools no longer needs to be micro-managed. By withdrawing [ICT] we are now giving schools and teachers [the choice] of what and how to teach. It’s important to stress that the study of ICT will remain compulsory at all key stages. But no school will be forced to follow [the old ICT curriculum] anymore. Schools can use the amazing resources available on the web,” said Gove.
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US Outsourcing Bill Causes Furore
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
A US bill has caused an uproar in India and the Philippines for punishing American companies for sending their customer call centres overseas.
The legislation, pushed by Republican Tim Bishop and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union, states that companies who outsource their contact centre requirements are not eligible for guaranteed federal loans and grants for a period of five years.
Politicians and corporations fear lost business due to the US bill’s protectionist measures. The “US Call Centre Worker and Consumer Protection Act”, would also require those companies to report themselves in advance to the Labour Department, which would maintain a public list of the companies that outsource.
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Eduserv’s Launches Education Cloud
Eduserv has launched the Education Cloud – a suite of cloud services that will help universities and researchers combat the peaks and troughs in compute and storage requirements, meet the flexible demands of researchers and provide off-site disaster recovery facilities.
Eduserv’s Education Cloud features compute and storage offerings under both VMware vCloud and OpenStack, and supports virtual machines running Windows and Linux.
Andy Powell, Eduserv Research Programme Director, comments: “Funding from the University Modernisation Fund enabled us to develop cloud infrastructure to host a number of SaaS pilot projects. We have used what we learnt during the pilot to develop a cloud offering that we believe will meet the specific needs of Higher Education Institutions professionals and students. It has direct connectivity to the JANET backbone, which is dedicated to education and research, and all data will remain in the UK at all times.”
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Accenture to Provide IT Support Services to the FBI
Accenture plc will now provide information technology support services to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Financial terms of the deal were kept confidential. The IT support services contract includes one base year with four option periods.
As per the agreement terms, Accenture will install, test and supervise an enterprise resource planning system to support the FBI’s Human Resources Information System. The new system installation will help FBI to modernize its HRIS unit and make its operations more effective and streamlined.
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Havering Council Transforms with Capgemini
Havering Council reports cost savings of £1.5 million per annum following a transformation of its back-office IT systems and business processes carried out through partnering with Capgemini UK plc. The Council says that the savings will rise to £2.5 million per annum once the second and final phase of the transformation is completed in April 2012. Havering Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Havering, which has a population of 230,000, and Capgemini UK plc is part of the Capgemini Group, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services.
The first phase of the transformation project, completed in just ten months, encompassed the majority of back-office functions at Havering including finance, payroll, HR and procurement, and has resulted in a significant reduction in paperwork and bureaucracy. A multiplicity of complex procedures has been replaced by simplified and standardised business processes based on proven international best practice. The project also involved migrating the Council from ageing earlier-generation IT systems to the latest Oracle enterprise-wide suite of business applications, custom-designed for UK local authorities.
Andrew BlakeHerbert, Group Director of Finance and Commerce at the London Borough of Havering, said: ‘Working with Capgemini, we have transformed our back office from being a largely paper-driven bureaucracy into a focused, modern and efficient business model - saving millions of pounds in the process. The first tranche of savings resulting from this transformation is already in the bank. Over the next five years we expect to save at least £15 million in back office cost, helping us protect frontline services for local people while managing large reductions in Government funding. We don’t know of any other local authority in the UK that has successfully managed such a wide-ranging change programme in such a short space of time.’
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Astrazeneca Reaffirms Outlook after Leak
AstraZeneca reaffirms outlook after a leak to sell-side analysts
AstraZeneca reaffirmed short and medium-term forecasts this morning after an inadvertant leak of an out-of-date spreadsheet templeta to sell-side analyst community in connection with a routine consensus estimate collection process had raised some questions. AstraZeneca maintains 2011 expextations communicated on December 20th.
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Ford Plans Cloud Research Lab
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Ford Motor Company has announced plans to create and open its first dedicated research lab in Silicon Valley early this year, further growing the company’s commitment to make technology affordable for millions.
Ford Research and Innovation, the company’s advanced engineering arm, will open the new Silicon Valley lab in the first quarter, helping ensure Ford keeps pace with consumer trends and aggressively prepares for the future by developing mobility solutions to harness the power of seamless connectivity, cloud computing and clean technology.
“Ford has an incredible heritage of driving innovation in the transportation and manufacturing sectors during the past 107 years,” said Paul Mascarenas, Ford chief technical officer and vice president of Research and Innovation. “Now it’s time to prepare for the next 100 years, ushering in a new era of collaboration and finding new partners to help us transform what it means to be an automaker.”
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Parliamentary ICT Seeks Managed Service Provider
Parliamentary ICT - on behalf of the House of Commons and the House of Lords is seeking to put in place a framework for the provision of a Managed Service solution for its wired and wireless data and voice network encompassing the design, supply, installation, commissioning, maintenance, support and management.
The framework will encompass two Lots, with a single Supplier for each Lot, or a single Supplier for both Lots.
The tender reads: “The new network infrastructure must be resilient and have sufficient capacity to carry additional network traffic at a later date.”
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Lufthansa Cargo AG Chooses CA Technologies For Project and Portfolio Management
CA Technologies has announced that Lufthansa Cargo AG, one of the largest air freight carriers in the world, is implementing CA Clarity™ Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) to more quickly adapt to a changing business environment.
With 4,500 people employed, delivering more than 1.8 million tons of freight and mail to 300 destinations globally, Lufthansa Cargo AG depends on smooth workflows and logistics, not only in the area of transportation, but equally with regard to project management.
In order to meet these challenges, Lufthansa Cargo AG was looking for a holistic project and portfolio management (PPM) application that would unify and consolidate all project information in one place. The solution also needed to provide resource management so that Lufthansa Cargo AG could balance capacity with demand, financial management to capture costs and all project transactions, and portfolio management to ensure that strategic investments are aligned to corporate goals.
After an in depth evaluation process, it became clear that Lufthansa Cargo AG required all of these functionalities to be present in a single solution to provide consistent access to all of the data essential for informed decision making.
“CA Clarity PPM was chosen over other providers particularly on the strength of its plenitude of functionality, its high-quality configuration options, and its flexibility,” commented Wolfram Martin, Head of Controlling Cross Functions Lufthansa Cargo AG.
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Cognizant Aids Telefónica UK Strengthen Customer Service and Sales
Cognizant, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, has announced it has been selected as a strategic partner by Telefónica UK, a leading communications company for consumers and businesses in the UK, to develop and manage the Company’s online applications that are critical to improving sales and enhancing customer service.
Under the multiyear, managed services agreement, Cognizant will provide comprehensive business and operational support to Telefónica UK’s online applications and enhance their agility, flexibility, and responsiveness to consumer demands and market changes. These applications perform a wide array of business-critical functions, ranging from promoting and providing access to Telefónica UK’s products and services, to delivering end-user self-service functionalities.
Cognizant will leverage its deep understanding of Telefónica UK’s business requirements and technology challenges to help the company keep its online systems operational and scalable, while providing rapid ongoing enhancements as required by the ever-broadening range of Telefónica UK’s products and services. This will help Telefónica UK increase customer loyalty, expand customer base, drive innovation, maximize returns on IT investments, and boost competitiveness by balancing cost, complexity, and capacity.
“Cognizant is pleased to work with Telefónica UK in helping the company create operational efficiencies and increase market share,” said Sanjiv Gossain, Senior Vice President and Global Practice Leader for Communications, Information, Media and Entertainment at Cognizant. “In a constantly changing communications marketplace characterized by a complex mix of consumer products and services, we are committed to driving excellence in Telefónica UK’s operations through proactive and reactive applications outsourcing services, and improved accountability, efficiency, flexibility, and speed. This will help Telefónica UK achieve its business goals and set new standards in customer satisfaction.”
“We selected Cognizant as our strategic partner because of its agile software development approach, leading communications industry knowledge, expertise in e-commerce technologies, and its proven delivery pedigree in IT application management services. Through this relationship, Telefónica UK will have access to Cognizant’s global delivery network, industry leading practices, and innovation,” said Brendan O’Rourke, Head of Online, Integration and Product Design, Telefónica UK. “Our online operations are business-critical and are key to differentiating our products and services in the most competitive mobile environment in the world. With Cognizant, we have developed an innovative and exciting strategic partnership that will allow us to continue to lead the market and accelerate our ability to differentiate our brand across all digital channels.”
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Network Rail Connects to O2 Business
Monday, January 09, 2012
O2 has announced that it has won a contract to work with Network Rail to refresh the whole of the company’s current Cisco switch and router estate across 450 sites, including four data centres in the UK. The three year contract with O2 Unify is worth several million pounds. In addition, O2 Unify has been awarded a substantial project to provide the Cisco LAN and WAN infrastructure for Network Rail’s new National Centre, The Quadrant, in Milton Keynes, which will accommodate 3,500 staff from this summer.
Initially O2 Unify will provide support and maintenance services for Network Rail’s current Cisco switch and router estate. Subsequently, O2 Unify will embark on a programme to refresh the Cisco estate, as much of the equipment is moving into its end-of-life cycle and critically will not support the future requirements of the business. The LAN and WAN infrastructure will be a key component that supports the company’s business objective of delivering mission critical network resiliency and availability. The refresh will enable Network Rail to achieve future convergence of services and drive significant efficiencies.
Paul Osborne, Managing Director of O2 Unify said, “Our strong service culture and customer focus from our core mobile business put us in a very strong position to provide wider communications services. We demonstrated strong technical capability in the LAN WAN space as well as good commercial positioning. O2 Unify is viewed as a safe pair of hands to deliver this project and we now provide a whole range of services for Network Rail including project management, business process outsourcing and consultancy as well as products such as WAN, LAN, fixed and mobile. Truly joining their business together.”
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KPMG Announces Fall In Profits
Partners at KPMG have suffered an £80,000 fall in their average share of profits, capping a tough year for Britain’s top accountancy firms.
The firm said that its profits were eroded because recruitment costs for its fast-growing consulting divisions had not been matched by a pick-up in work from takeover deals. These had yielded huge fees for the City’s leading professional services firms before the financial crisis.
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02 to Provide Free Wifi
Mobile operator O2 is to provide free internet to “millions” of residents and visitors in central London by launching Europe’s largest free wi-fi zone.
The service will be rolled out across the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in 2012.
O2 said the deal, which will have no cost to the taxpayer, will enable visitors to “make the most of what London has to offer”.
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Atos SA Plans to Acquire 50% of MSL Group
Atos SA announced that it will acquire a 50% of MSL Group, a provider of real-time results and information systems for large sporting events. The transaction, whose completion is expected before March 31, 2012, also provides an option to Atos to hold all the shares of MSL Group.
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