Industry news

A consortium of IT firms led by Unisys, the global IT solutions company, has procured a contract from the European Commission (EC) that involves providing IT support to over 40,000 civil servants in the EU.

This contract is the largest ever that has been outsourced by the EC. The public-private deal includes development, studies and support for the institution's information systems; project management, analytics and consulting will also be involved.

The consortium includes the companies Unisys Belgium, Trasys Group, Atos, Sogeti, Intrasoft, Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Everis, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, Iris and Piksel.

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Read this next: The New EU Public Procurement Laws: What you need to know

IT outsourcing kingpins Infosys and Wipro are fighting to protect existing outsourcing contracts valued at over $2 billion, which are currently due to expire at the end of this financial year.

Both firms are struggling to keep up with average industry growth rates, and need to retain key accounts with buyers like AstraZeneca, Bank of America and Apple if they're going to compete with other offshore competitors.

Vishal Sikka, CEO at Infosys, has personally taken charge of a number of top contracts to ensure that the clients involved are retained.

Infosys was founded in 1981 in Pune, but relocated to Bangalore in 1983. Wipro was first incorporated at the end of 1945 in Mumbai. Both companies specialise in IT services and outsourcing.

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Read this next: Infosys Commits to 5 Year Outsourcing Deal with TNT

In the latest outsourcing news from Asia, Indian ITO provider Tech Mahindra opened a new office in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Thursday, strengthening its position in the South-East Asian nation.

Commenting on the inauguration, Rohit Gandhi (Head of Enterprise, APIMA) said that “Vietnam is a key part of our regional strategy and is the sixth country in ASEAN where Tech Mahindra now has a physical presence. The sales office in Hanoi is another step in being closer to our customers.”

Tech Mahindra plan to increase their presence in Vietnam to 100 staff members by 2018.

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Read this next: Infosys and Wipro Scramble to Retain Expiring Outsourcing Contracts

Harrow Council will announce who has won their new five year ICT outsourcing deal in April. Steria, HCL and Fujitsu have been shortlisted for the contract which is valued between £30m and £100m.

The chosen supplier will be providing applications, infrastructure and service transformation and management.

Harrow is also currently looking into the possibility of entering into a shared services agreement with other councils for back office functions such as HR and revenues services.

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Read this next: Havant Borough Council Faces Outsourcing Dilemma

'The functions and resources focused on the Met’s strategic business needs will remain within the Met and the functions and resources associated with solution development, deployment and service delivery will be outsourced.'

Yesterday, Computer Weekly broke the news that the Metropolitan Police plans to outsource 700 roles related to software development and IT services. This information came out over the course of two February issues of the Digital Policing Newsletter, s regular internal email newsletter sent by the Met to its employees.

It's expected that, of the 500 full time IT employees and 300 IT contractors working at the Met, just 100 will remain in-house after changes are complete. The Met announced that it plans to retain those in leadership and strategic positions, with the hope that their IT operation will evolve into an efficient, seamless outsourced operation headed by in-house employees.

Computer Weekly reported that the Met Police must save £800m from its annual budget (£3.2bn for 2015-16) by 2020.

The Met is no stranger to outsourcing. A year ago they moved away from their ITO relationship with Capgemini in favour of a 'tower model', where non-core services are broken up and outsourced to a number of third part specialists. The tower model has since been widely cricitised by the UK government.

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Read this next: IT Industry Clashes with UK Government over 'tower model' outsourcing

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is becoming increasingly popular as a method to bring down costs among US healthcare companies.

Eight of the 10 largest US health payers now outsource major portions of their operations. The most popular operations for outsourcing among these companies include analytics, claims modernisation, alternative payments services, security, and sales and marketing.

74 per cent of the managing representatives from these companies said that they were likely outsource the development and management of new payment models because their own technology, staff or resources are currently inadequate.

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Read this next: NHS England Suffers Huge IT Funding Cuts

Orange may have recently terminated its beloved ‘Orange Wednesdays’, but the mobile network operator clearly has its eyes on a much bigger prize.

At the Mobile World Congress yesterday, Orange’s technical strategy director Yves Bellego announced that the company is considering offshoring with a move into Africa, shortly after the success of a major deal with Sweden’s Ericsson closed late last year.

The Ericsson contract was announced on the same day, and will cover five European markets where the Swedish multinational communications provider serves over 30 million customers.

The arrangement is expected to economically benefit both companies and improve service provided to customers in Spain, Belgium, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova.

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Read this next: IBM Expands into Egypt’s Technology Sector

United Airlines revealed on Tuesday that they expect non-fuel costs to fall by almost $800 million by the close of this year, as it seeks to cut annual costs by $1 billion within two years.

The American airline, headquartered in Chicago, suggested that the cuts were driven in some part by the outsourcing of 1150 positions across 16 airports in the USA.

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NHS England has had their public funding for integrated digital care cut to £43m instead of £240m. This may result in several NHS IT projects having to be severely scaled back or cut altogether.

The funds are believed to have been cut to accommodate hospitals that have been struggling.

The first round of the integrated digital care fund was open to NHS Trusts to support the transfer of paper-based clinical record-keeping to integrated digital care records (IDCRs).

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Read this next: IT Industry Clashes with UK Government over Public Contracts

On Monday 2nd March 2015, Infosys broke the news that it had signed a five-year outsourcing deal with TNT to help improve the Dutch company's technology applications.

Infosys is an Indian business technology consulting, IT solutions and IT services company, specialising in both BPO and ITO. TNT is a courier business offering global express distribution, logistics and international mail services, founded in the Netherlands.

The new business transformation strategy, dubbed by TNT as 'Outlook', involves overhauling the company's IT capability in order to reduce its complexity and boost its flexibility.

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Read this next: Indian Giant Infosys Buys US Tech Firm for $200m