Industry news

The Justice Department does not possess the requisite knowledge to outsource effectively according to a statement from the chairman of the justice select committee.

Chairman Committee, Sir Alan Beith, said that new plans to outsource multiple functions within the Ministry of Justice risked being becoming a “multiple train crash", as the public sector lacks understanding of many of services it is seeking to contract out.

The concern follows the problems of the MoJ’s outsourcing of courtroom interpreting services in England and Wales.

Despite claims of teething problems in the MoJ’s attempts to outsource services, the Ministry achieved savings £16.7 million in the first year through the outsourcing of translator services to Capita.

MoJ scraps procurement programme

Ministry of Justice’s handling of outsourcing is ‘shambolic’

Mobile services are expected to have generated around £400 billion for the economy by the end of the year according to a new report released by the GSM Association.

The economic potential of mobile services far outweighs the contributions of wireless and terrestrial services, with these services only contributing £70 billion combined so far compared to £253 billion of mobile.

The report shows the level of consumer change according within Europe, as traditional TV viewing and internet use is replaced by the need for on-demand mobile connectivity, with the capacity to handle large levels of data.

Development of mobile infrastructure including the rollout of 4G is expected to result in the rapid growth and uptake of services over the short-term.

The GSM Association are predicting a 77 percent increase over the next 10 years.

Tom Phillips, Chief Government and Regulatory Affairs Officer, GSMA, said: "Spectrum is an essential resource and governments play a critical role in ensuring that those receiving licences deliver services that will enhance the lives of consumers, create new business opportunities and drive economic growth in Europe".

Mobile sales triple within a year reaching £7.5 billion in 2012

Denise McDonagh, the former director of the UK government’s G-Cloud, has called on departments to act with confidence and take more risks in order to drive public savings.

“We do have some challenges, but I believe that within government and the public sector we have the ability to think for ourselves, take control, and do things differently. We just need to have the confidence in ourselves, and need to be able to take a risk,” she said.

McDonagh described how risks need to be taken in order to help suppliers, adding that the G-Clouds move under the control of the Government’s Digital Services, would help to increase support and funding for change.

“Suppliers took a risk to come onto this framework, now we need to think about the risks we are prepared to take in order to deliver not only the savings, but the much improved service to the customer.”

Oracle opens new datacentre to support UK G-Cloud

Whitehall pushes 2013 G-Cloud savings

Oracle and Microsoft will announce the details of a new partnership on Monday, the partnership forms part of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s promise of a series of “startling announcements” surrounding the database giant made this Thursday.

Ellison said that Oracle will be soon announcing partnerships with the largest and most important SaaS businesses in the world, including Salesforce and NetSuite, alongside Microsoft.

The new partnership are expected to be based around upgrades to Oracle’s new offering, based on the fact that Salesforce and NetSuite have already been in partnerships with Oracle.

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella will make a speech with Oracle's president Mark Hurd at a press conference on Monday.

Oracle to acquire mobile service provider Tekelec

U.S. based wireless company Sprint Nextel is set to be acquired by Japanese based SoftBank, after a bidding war which ended with the withdrawal of main competitor, Dish Network.

Sprint Nextel which is the third-largest wireless operator in the U.S. based on subscribers represents strong growth as well as a large entry into the U.S. market for the Japanese company.

Sprint recently moved to buy out its partner, paying $5 a share for the reminder of partner Clearwire’s stake.

The bid offer, which stands at $12.6 billion, now awaits shareholder approval and clearance for U.S. regulators.

AT&T pays $1.9 billion for Verizon wireless spectrum

New Broadband regulation expected to deliver savings of €60 billion

New research published by Independent t sourcing advisor Alsbridge has revealed that IT professionals feel that contracts are too rigid and are not open to renegotiation.

The study found that just under two thirds of senior IT professionals surveyed believed that ITO suppliers would not be open to flexibility in contracts.

The study revealed that IT professionals feel limited by a lack of data surrounding contracts and the services that the ITO supplier provides, with 71 percent saying they lacked information to renegotiate.

The survey revealed the need for real-time market data in order to leverage contract change through negotiation.

ITO contract: Should I stay or should I go?

Bidders have moved to offer bids for the rollout of smart meters across the UK, as industries gear themselves for the transfer to the new national measuring process.

The deployment of smart meter across the UK has now entered the pre-rollout stage, with tenders submitting offers for the delivery of new services.

While smart meters have been in operation in the UK for some time, industries have only implemented meters sporadically, often based on user choice.

Contracts up for biding include management of the overall project, data services provider and communications provider. Companies that have entered the bidding process include Capita, G4S, IBM and Telefonica.

The national implementation of smart meters is set to begin in autumn 2015, with 50 million meters expected to be installed by 2020.

Ofgem calls for competition measures to be enforced on energy giants

IBM has revealed that cloud services and platforms are finally showing signs of strong uptake across Australia.

Despite a lot of talk and hype surrounding the impact and employment of cloud and service based on the platform, past uptake of the services had been slow, however a new report by IBM suggests change.

IBM has released a report entitled ‘Truth Behind the Trends’ which saw the IT giant question IT executives across Australia.

The report found that past concerns regarding risks relating to data regulation and security had limited uptake, but that an increase in infrastructure had reversed this trend.

IBM cloud expert Anton Lak said: “It's only in the last 12 months that we've seen an increased amount of infrastructure based in Australia, hence it is easier for Australian organisations to do it without concern".

T-Mobile Austria moves to the cloud

Research by IDC market has revealed that an increasing number of high performance computing (HPC)sites have moved to employ big data within analytics, with more than two thirds now employing macro analysis.

In 2013, 67 percent of HPC sites worldwide said that they carried out bid data analytics, with an average of 30 percent of computing processing power being devoted to the analysis of big data.

The rise of big data usage within HPC sites is related to use in fraud detection programs, medicine and genomics, as well as increasing use in commercial analytics.

The report also looked to the future of the market: “Data-driven businesses with a constant thirst for storing and analysing large quantities of data will force suppliers to develop big data–friendly solutions — solutions that are designed to minimize the movement of data and at the same time provide the economies of scale needed to store this data”.

Banks move to enhance analytic capabilities

A recent series of takeovers by Indian firms of foreign businesses has been fuelled by the availability of cheap loans from international banks.

Low levels of inflation on loans from banks have allowed Indian business to pursue a model of rapid expansion in foreign sectors. Banks including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered have all moved to provide loans to Indian businesses, in a move that buckles the trend set in 2012 of moving away from providing loans to the country during the economic slump.

Examples of the level of foreign investment in India can be seen in the acquisition of American based Cooper Tire & Rubber Co, by the much smaller Apollo Tyres Ltd for $2.5 billion, with investment from the banking sector funding the purchase outright.

With expectations of a global financial recovery, Indian businesses are moving to capitalise on the future growth potential of foreign business. Foreign investment has become more important for long term expansion as the domestic market slows and the Indian economy begins to slow.

Indian IT companies faced with rising U.S. costs

India and Germany boost links through language education program