Industry news

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.

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — Industry experts predict artificial intelligence will augment rather than replace most global outsourcing jobs through 2030, though growing nationalism and potential U.S. service tariffs pose significant risks to the sector.

Leaders in the global outsourcing industry gathered at a Global Technology and Business Services Council (GTBSC) webinar to discuss the future of outsourcing, highlighting both opportunities and challenges facing the sector in 2025 and beyond

Read the full article on Outsource Accelerator here.

At 00:01 this morning the new Procurement Act 2023 came into force - heralding a new era of transparency, simplicity and greater commercial flexibility.

This is a fantastic milestone which has involved collaboration right across the whole public sector, with practitioners, businesses and suppliers, as well as procurement experts, academics, and lawyers all working together to get us to this point. We are grateful for everyone’s contributions and ongoing support from all our stakeholders as we move forward into this next phase of implementation and start to realise the benefits of the reforms.

The Act commences with three strong new operational elements, all live from today:

• A new Central Digital Plat
  
• A new Procurement Review Unit and National Security Unit for Procurement
  

Read more here

DXC Technology has extended its existing relationship with the European Space Agency (ESA) with the award of a new contract to develop an AI platform that will enable the Agency to build and deploy AI-powered solutions. The ESA is an intergovernmental organisation that collaborates internationally and supports economic growth via space technology and research.

The new platform will be named “Ask ESA” and is to be designed and built by DXC. The platform will run on NVIDIA and utilise GenAI from French startup Mistral AI, which specialises in the development of large language models (LLMs). The project has been initiated by Francois Margottin, the ESA’s Head of Application Services.

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

UK insurance group, Utmost Life and Pensions (formerly Reliance Mutual) has selected it longstanding partner, Atos, to lead a full transformation of its IT estate. The two companies have an existing managed services relationship that began in 2012. Under the terms of this latest agreement, Atos will oversee the migration of Utmost’s IT systems to the Microsoft Azure cloud.

Utmost Life and Pensions, selected Atos to lead the IT transformation project based on its deep understanding of Utmost Life and Pensions’ operational needs and its established reputation in transformational outsourcing. Mark Francis, CFO at Utmost Life and Pensions said: “It’s vital that we have a best-in-class IT foundation to provide a reliable and responsive service to the over 290,000 policyholders that Utmost Life and Pensions protects and helps save for the long term. The cloud platform provides us with the scalability we require to meet our ambitious long term strategic growth goals.”

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

NTT DATA has published the findings of its latest research exploring the use of generative AI (GenAI) in the banking sector. The report, entitled “Intelligent banking in the Age of AI”, highlighted a significant increase in adoption of the technology with 58% of the financial services institutions fully embracing GenAI, up from 45% in 2023. Interestingly, the survey indicates that only 50% of the banks surveyed are looking to GenAI as a method of improving productivity and efficiency, whilst 49% believe the technology can help to reduce operational IT spend.

The findings of NTT Data’s new research indicate that the use of GenAI technology in the banking sector varies in terms of the motivation behind the investments being made. The disparity between the drivers of GenAI adoption in banking vary globally, with almost 59% of US banks looking to reduce their IT budgets and 47% keen to cut operating costs. However, only 43% of European banks highlighted cutting IT budgets as a priority whilst 36% were focused on reducing operating costs. Productivity was highlighted as the most important factor for European banks by 46% of respondents.

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

Global data and technology provider, Experian has extended its eight-year relationship with US-headquartered IT services provider, UST with a new AI-focused proposition. The new strategic partnership is designed to help financial services organisations accelerate innovation and enhance their offerings using AI technology.

The new partnership will initially combine UST’s GenAI Sandbox with Experian's Aperture Data Studio product, to enable more informed decision-making. UST’s GenAI Sandbox enables businesses to experiment with AI in a safe test environment. Meanwhile, Aperture Data Studio incorporates self-service data with pre-built Experian datasets in a data quality and enrichment platform.

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced a one-year extension to its existing contract with Kyndryl to support its core network infrastructure.

The extension, worth £2.28m, is to enable Defra to continue to bring down its technical debt as it moves to cloud. Kyndryl will be helping Defra modernise and manage the systems that run the department’s critical services to citizens. Aspects of the contract include modernising the Animal Disease Testing Service application and aiding the adoption of tech such as 5G-enabled edge computing and software-defined networking.

Government is a key market for Kyndryl in the UK, as is Financial Services. The firm also recently announced a strategic agreement with Co-operative Bank to migrate existing on-prem applications to Amazon Web Services.

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.

Back in December we heard at Sopra Steria’s Capital Markets Day the firm’s plan for the next three years which included a commitment to doubling its consulting business to 12% of revenue while targeting 60% from digital services. This shift towards higher-value services, coupled with their strong vertical focus in public sector, aerospace/defence, and financial services, is to be key to differentiating in a competitive marketplace.

The company also flagged up a €1bn M&A war chest signalling serious intent to consolidate its position in its key European markets. It looks like some of that money is going to be spent on acquiring French management consultant Aurexia, a boutique firm founded in 2006, with expertise in financial services, particularly in areas such as operational efficiency, compliance, and digital transformation. With 140 consultants and projected 2024 revenue of €20m (80% from France), Aurexia has demonstrated solid growth, expanding revenue 11% last year.

Read the full article on TechMarketView here.