Industry news

Manish Sablok, Head of Marketing, CNE Europe at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, explains how this year, IT departments need to move on from focusing solely on devices, to instead concentrate on delivering the user experience.

In business, the seemingly unstoppable Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has been a key driving force. But IT departments still tend to focus on the most visible part of this transformation: the actual device in the workplace. They now need to look at the bigger picture of this transformation, particularly on 'app-ification' – where the users expect an application for everything as well as the enabling seamless network access: wired or wireless.

Workplaces are transforming. Employees are becoming app-hungry consumers, expecting the same level of simple, effective connectivity and communication regardless of which personal device they choose to use, whether it’s a tablet, smartphone or laptop: their experience across any device must equal the same experience.

I call it the new era of the Personal Cloud. It’s all about users being able to use any device, anywhere, to access any service. Whether that's for business processes, storage, databases, emails, messaging, watching videos or sending pictures, it must be possible via any platform – CRM, SCMs and even enterprise and non-enterprise social collaboration tools such as Facebook and YouTube – the list goes on and will continue to do so. Whichever service they choose, the user expects to have the same experience delivered.

So in the future world of the new Personal Cloud (PC) era, we can expect the symptom of the device to evolve into 'BYOX' where X signifies any application or network access of your choice. Enter the new era of the Personal Cloud.

The architecture to support this delivery must be built by an Application Fluent Network strategy that is user-centric, not device-centric. And it must be able to deliver applications, data and services to any user in the most appropriate and secure fashion, understanding the device the person is employing at the time, as well as the type of application he is using, to then provide him with appropriate connectivity. In order to achieve this, the Application Fluent Network (AFN) architecture must offer three key attributes: a resilient architecture, streamlined operations and automatic control, three key capabilities that enable and shape the user experience.

The new generation of applications and services are already evolving to this new PC era. For example, our OpenTouch-based UC solutions for example, provide business users with multimedia collaborative conversations experience through simple, intuitive and contextual application through any device they choose.

So enter the new PC Era, which improves workflow and user productivity to new levels. The AFN architecture lowers operational costs, therefore providing a higher Return on Investment (ROI) and overall transformed user experience irrespective of their choice of device.

The British Red Cross has moved to tender for IT suppliers to provider framework and hardware services.

The charity has posted a prior information notice for an “upcoming tender opportunity” for hardware, including PCs, tablets and laptops across the UK.

The Red Cross has specified that multiples contractors will be involved in providing the IT framework and that only large suppliers are being sought.

The tender is for a two-year contract, with a deadline set for the 1st April 2014 for bids to be entered.

Councils receive £6.9 million in recognition of ICT transformation

Public sector software and IT services market declines

A new report by Gartner has predicted that data discovery will become a significant future trend for business intelligence (BI) vendors.

The report identified that data discovery will become the prime focus of BI vendors, ahead of report generation.

The report said that: "the majority of current IT-centric vendors will shift the focus of new product investment and platform emphasis from IT-authored production reporting, to governed, business-user-driven data discovery and analysis".

The report also identified that easy-to-use business intelligence tools would become the norm and that competition between system integrators and BI vendors would increase, as analytic applications from the two groups become increasingly similar.

Insight into IT set to be a key focus for 2014

UK graduates lack skills for big data

Intel has acquired the wireless assets of Mindspeed Technologies, which will be used to enhance the IT giant’s data centre and mobile services.

The acquisition comes as part of a large purchasing plan to acquire technology to develop Intel’s wireless and data centre offerings.

The purchasing plan has seen Intel move to acquire multiple businesses and intellectual properties, with past purchases including the $1.4 billion acquisition of Infineon Technologies' wireless division in 2011 and the purchasing of Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless Products, the U.S. based subsidiary of Fujitsu in 2013, as part of the companies plans to expand its mobile services.

Intel announces investments of $40 million

Intel loses market position as PC sales fall

EE has announced plans to invest £275 million in 2014 in developing the companies call handling capabilities.

The investment will include upgrades to 5,000 2G and 5,500 3G sites, increasing capacity, reliably and quality of service.

Funds will also be used to develop future call services including VoLTE and voice over Wi-Fi services.

EE CEO Olaf Swantee said: "This year, we have been focusing a large amount of our activity and investment on offering consumers the most reliable, highest quality phone call experience".

He added, “we plan to invest £275m in our voice call service in 2014 as we strive to set new standards in call quality and reliability."

Vodafone moves to acquire stake in German telecoms market

The government has revealed plans to make local authorities increasingly open and transparent, requiring them to publish details including data surrounding expenditure, staff payment, procurement and property estates.

The plans follow on from the voluntary transparency codes introduced in 2011, with the new plans being mandatory for all councils with income or expenditure in excess of £6.5 million.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is open to feedback or clarification until the 17th of January 2014.

Local government secretary Eric Pickles said: "Councils need to make sensible savings to help freeze Council Tax and protect frontline services. This new wave of town hall transparency will empower armchair auditors to expose municipal waste”.

“Greater power for local government must go hand in hand with greater local transparency and local accountability."

London councils look to create savings with outsourcing contracts

A government committee report has criticised the civil service for its role in managing contracts.

The parliamentary committee detailed that too much emphasis was being placed on short-term goals and that the civil service was not “equipped to support consistent contract management”.

The report detailed that failings stemmed from an inability to learn from past mistakes, a failure to plan for long-term change, using large suppliers instead of SMEs and a lack of management skills.

Liaison Committee chair Sir Alan Beith said: there are systemic failings in civil service contract management. We have raised specific concerns about the paucity of commercial skills, and officials feeling unable to speak truth to power.”

“We believe that a coherent analysis of the state of the civil service, and the requirements placed upon it, would help to improve governance across Whitehall, and help to eliminate the contract-management failures seen in recent years.”

Calls for shorter public sector procurement processes

Wales launches National Procurement Service

Three Westminster City Councils, consisting of Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith & Fulham Council, have agreed to join together to create a shared service IT framework.

The framework will be managed by Agilisys, who will provide service desk and integration services alongside management services, with the full framework to be in place by autumn next year.

Westminster City Councillor Melvyn Caplan, Cabinet Member for Finance, Resources and Customer Services, said: “The vision of the Tri-borough programme is combining services to tackle common problems, improve people's lives and make public money go further".

Councils move to create shared ICT education framework

Outsourcing giant Serco is to take a 17 million pound charge after the company recorded three UK loss-making ventures in the health care sector.

The announcement comes as the company is stripped of its electronic tagging contract with the Ministry of Justice, after allegations of fraud, which resulted in a dip in the company’s share price.

The announcement contrasts with the 4.9 billion pound revenue that the company made in 2012, with more than half of the figure coming from UK projects.

Serco group CEO Chris Hyman has since stepped down, with the company looking to regain trust with the UK government.

Serco CEO steps down after criminal investigation

NHS launches £100 million fund for innovative IT

European SMEs are confident about future growth according to new research by Vodafone.

Of the 1,700 SMEs surveyed across Europe, more than half said that business was performing at stronger than it had two years ago, with 80 per cent saying that they were confident of growth over the coming two years.

82 per cent of SMEs cited investment in ITC as having provided direct business benefit, while 88 per cent said that improved customer services had been key to growing their business.

Vodafone group enterprise chief executive Nick Jeffery said: “It's striking how businesses in towns and cities across Europe share a common view that further investment in technology will be critical to future prosperity."

Francis Maude calls for SMEs to put pressure on the government procurement process

UK SMEs favour freelancers