Industry news

Atos has won a contract with NS&I, valued at over £500m, to support their transformation, to protect existing services and collaborate in a multi-supplier ecosystem to transform systems and processes.

Atos, with our partner Sopra Banking, will continue to run legacy services, implement new systems, and extend B2B services to UK Government customers and the UK Public – a truly critical national service.

Our solution is aligned to deliver NS&I’s key objectives for increased digital services and automation, reduced time to change, a lower cost profile and enhanced customer services showcasing the UK governments confidence in our strategy and capability.

Read the full article on Atos.

Atos announces the appointment of Michael Herron as Head of UK&I, Atos Group, as of January 27, 2025.

With a strong track record in leadership as well as extensive expertise and knowledge of delivering digital transformation within the public sector, Michael will bring valuable skills to the management team in UK&I and at the Group level, as Atos opens a new chapter in its history.

Michael Herron, Head of UK&I, Atos Group, “I am delighted to join the Atos team at such a pivotal moment and look forward to working with the UK&I team to deliver operational excellence, drive growth, continue quality of service and to provide an end-to-end offering to support our customers on their digital journey.”

Read the full article on Atos here.

Further movement in the AI-led Business Process space yesterday, saw WNS acquire Houston-based Kipi.ai, a Snowflake Elite Partner specialising in data modernisation services. An acquisition that should strengthen WNS's analytics and AI practice while expanding its decision intelligence offerings across a range of sectors. Whilst the client base is currently mainly in the US, there is no reason why WNS cannot take the capabilities global.

Founded in 2021, Kipi.ai looks good on paper, claiming some 600 SnowPro certifications, 250+ proprietary AI and ML solutions, and a team of over 600 employees with data engineering expertise. The company's presence in banking, insurance, manufacturing, and healthcare complements WNS's existing client portfolio.

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

Accenture has agreed to acquire Soben, a Glasgow HQ’d global construction consultancy which specialises in data centre development and the pharmaceutical and energy sectors. The purchase aims to boost Accenture Industry X’s capital projects capabilities in advisory as well as project, cost and commercial management for clients.Logo

Founded in 2011 as Smyth Contract Services, Soben has expanded significantly from its quantity surveying and Scottish roots. Today the firm’s services include project management consultancy, scheduling, project controls, cost and commercial management, consultancy and advisory, and carbon cost management. Soben’s 250 personnel work with leading global hyperscalers and co-location providers on major data centre construction initiatives across the UK, Europe, the US, Mexico, Brazil, India and Australia.

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

The UK government has announced an overhaul of how it funds, manages and regulates digital projects, promising a “start-up mindset” as it attempts to overcome the barriers to tech adoption, save taxpayer money and boost public services.

Speaking at techUK yesterday, Peter Kyle (Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology) said the UK had suffered from a failure of optimism and pragmatism, and without change it risks being left behind. He said there is “no possible version of that future which does not have technology at its heart” and that “transparent, adaptable, pro-innovation regulation” will be central to the government’s digital and technologies sector plan.

Read the full article here.

Legacy on-premises systems, weighed down by years of customisation, have become a barrier for professional services firms looking to integrate AI and improve efficiency.

In response, EY is embarking on a major transformation, moving its internal business systems to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, hosted on Microsoft Azure.

EY wants to build what it calls “the first autonomous ERP business system” by embedding AI agents throughout its processes.

This positions EY at the leading edge of enterprise migrations to SAP, as organisations increasingly seek real-time analytics and automation to improve decision-making and operational speed.

Read the full article on Procurement Magazine here.

Speaking from the QEII Centre during Procurement & Supply Chain: Sustainability, the premier two-day event focused on sustainable supply chain practices, Megan Youngs, Scope 3 Reporting Manager at NatWest, shared valuable insights on NatWest's approach to Scope 3 emissions reporting and management.

How are NatWest implementing Scope 3 strategies in their procurement and supply chain function?

We are focusing on our top emitting suppliers at the moment. They make up around 70% of our supply chain emissions. Using data that we've collected from suppliers over the last few years via CDP and annual reports, we are identifying hotspots for engagement, going out to suppliers, asking them, ‘What's your blocker? How can we help?’

Read the full article on Procurement Magazine here.

Indian IT services provider, Hexaware, has released its latest full year results highlighting double-digit revenue growth and a healthy profit. The results for the twelve months ended 31 December 2024 were fuelled by an excellent performance in the US.

Within its earnings announcement, Hexaware highlighted a number of recent client successes including: replacing Appian with AWS cloud-native solutions and ServiceNow for a large US mortgage provider; a GenAI-based application modernisation project for a major US airline; a digital banking implementation for a large South-East Asian bank, and delivering cybersecurity services for a global provider of financial markets data and infrastructure (headquartered in the UK).

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

The government has delayed until summer publication of its AI Bill, a new law intended to regulate AI, following on from the EU AI Act which came into force last year.

The government had been expected to introduce such a bill shortly after it was elected in July, which would have demanded that companies provide their AI models to the UK’s AI Security Institute for testing. The aim of the bill was to assuage fears that AI could pose a risk to humanity, or be misused by nefarious actors by having new models vetted by the Institute.

However, fears of a backlash by the new American administration have repeatedly delayed the introduction of the bill, which has now been put back to summer at the earliest.

Read the full article on Computing here.

Fresh from questioning whether AI will provide all the economic benefits it is expected to deliver over the next five years, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is now pulling the company back on a number of datacentre investments.

That’s according to investment bank TD Cowen. Its sources indicate that Microsoft has cancelled leases amount to “a couple of hundred megawatts with at least two private datacentre operators”, pulled back on completing a number of others, and re-allocated datacentre spending from international markets to the US.

These and other factors, the investment bank suggests, indicates “a material slowdown in international leasing” for datacentre space after a two-and-a-half year boom.

Read the full article on Computing here.