Industry news

BAE Systems and the Vodafone Group have entered into a five year partnership to develop and market security products for the communications market, including smartphones and tablets.

The partnership will see Vodafone becoming BAE’s preferred supplier for all mobile communication devices.

The first product developed by the partnership will be a cloud-based security application called Vodafone Mobile Threat Manager, to be launched in Spring 2013.

The five year partnership will focus services at a business enterprise level, with high demand for increased security as technology develops and uptake increases in the workforce. BAE Systems CEO, Ian King said: “technologies are subject to the vulnerabilities of cyber space and we can provide the mobile marketplace with protection against today's threats and the advanced threats of the future".

In a study carried out by the Institute of Directors' (IoD) has revealed dissatisfaction with BT, particularly by IoD members in rural areas.

42 percent of members surveyed by the institute were dissatisfied with BT’s Openreach service, with the figure increasing to 46 percent in rural areas.

Members of the IoD viewed internet speeds as being critical to productivity and that rural speeds were preventing business development. 60 percent of members said they were dissatisfied with mobile download speeds in rural areas.

The research comes after the Governments focus on improving broadband speeds around the UK, with BT so far winning 100 percent of all available funding.

Corin Taylor, senior economic adviser to the IoD, said: "There is a lot of work to be done before the service provided in the real world matches up to the rhetoric coming from Westminster and Whitehall.”

In a move to tender for increased public sector business, India’s largest software services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has created a new delivery centre in Liverpool.

The Liverpool delivery centre will follow tighter regulation and have increased security in order to comply with governmental department demands for suppliers working with sensitive data and Impact Level 3 (IL3) security constraints.

The centre will deliver services to the home office, with an initial five year multi-million pound IT services contract. Shankar Narayanan, country head for U.K. and Ireland at TCS, described how the centre will allow: “DBS to modernize and transform its business while supporting our longer term strategy for increased participation in transformation programs for the U.K. public sector".

The National Outsourcing Association (NOA) has opened elections for the creation of its new Council. The Council itself is designed to act as a board of strategic advisors for the NOA, with its objective being to help shape the strategic focus of the NOA and the industry as a whole.

Elected positions are for sector and subject specific roles. The following roles are currently open for election:

• Legal Member

• Public Sector Member

• Financial Services Member

• Utilities Member

• Pharm Member

• Retail Member

• Travel and Transport Member

• Advisory Member

• Standards Member

Votes will be counted and elected members announced on 15th March. Council members will attend the first NOA Council meeting on April 22nd.

Workplace technologies are growing both in volume and variety. It's estimated that by 2014 the average knowledge worker will have 3.3 connected devices.

This proliferation of client hardware – and associated software – means life is about to get even tougher in IT procurement. More devices mean more invoices, more warranties, more suppliers, more product roadmaps – the end result of which is more cost and complexity.

With consumerisation, collaboration and cloud computing also expanding the traditional enterprise IT portfolio, the procurement burden is steadily growing while budgets are declining.

Below are the five steps that will help organisations achieve more for less by optimising the IT supply chain.

Step 1: Build the perfect product portfolio

Thanks to cloud computing and the ‘bring your own device’ revolution, it’s never been easier for users to take IT procurement and provisioning into their own hands.

To stay in control, organisations need to ensure that their enterprise IT catalogue matches demand both from employer and employee. Windows 7 and 8 upgrades, desktop and application virtualisation, mobility and employee choice schemes are key factors to consider when updating and reviewing your IT portfolio.

At the same time as offering more choice, organisations need to ensure consistency. Products should be standardised where possible to simplify on-going support and common bundles created to accelerate the on-boarding of new staff.

Step 2: Rationalise the supplier base

An IT-enabled business needs to source a vast array of workplace, networking and datacenter technologies from an equally diverse range of providers. For example, financial services firm BGC Partners used to procure IT equipment from up to 40 different suppliers until it established a strategic.

A distributed procurement model not only increases the administrative burden but can also put the continuity of the entire IT supply chain at risk, which in turn can impact the execution of new business initiatives.

Step 3: Adopt smart finance options

In today’s tough economic climate, businesses are rewriting the IT budget rules: goodbye erratic investment, hello predictable costs. Leasing, bill and hold, pay-as-you-go and planned life purchase schemes can all help organisations achieve this shift in emphasis.

Planned life purchase schemes are particularly effective in minimising the cost of desktop refreshes, which will be on the agenda for many organisations over the next 12 months as they bring their client devices in line with the technical specification of Windows 7.

Step 4: Minimise deployment times

Once the decision has been made to invest in new technologies the pressure is on to get them deployed as quickly as possible. In today’s ‘on-demand’ world, IT devices need to arrive ready for immediate use – whether it involves an end user device, a network switch or a blade server.

Pre-deployment services, such as asset tagging, imaging, configuration and staging help reduce implementation timelines so your organisation can realise the full benefits of new technologies faster. When these are combined with efficient low-cost deployment services, the procure to go-live process becomes fully optimised.

To ensure the supply chain extends across head office, the branch network and home offices, organisations need access to a range of affordable dispatch and deployment options – from timed deliveries and bundled solutions to un-boxing and installation services.

Step 5: Unlock residual value from used assets

The IT refresh cycle means that organisations are continually retiring a range of hardware assets. Although these assets might be ‘old’ and used, it doesn’t mean they are worthless.

By remarketing or recycling unwanted IT equipment, organisations can unlock residual value while also meeting European environmental legislative requirements.

These five steps are fundamental for establishing a more cost-effective and efficient IT procurement operation. As demand for new hardware and software increases, organisations need to ensure they have a seamless and responsive supply chain. Otherwise the mavericks will simply bypass official procurement channels creating an even bigger problem – and bigger bill – for the future.

The procurement process is set to resume for the tender of a major UK flood defence contract, after the failure of the West Coast Mainline procurement process, which raised fears that flaws were systemic within government procurement and halted the contract.

15 bidders are believed to have spent £1 million on the suspended procurement process, with engineering firm Atkins widely rumoured at the time to be the preferred vendor.

The procurement process is expected to resume next Tuesday. A Environment Agency spokesman said of the delay: “We do not believe delivery of flood defence projects will be held up by the re-tendering and are confident the amount of new work which bidders are required to do will be minimal."

The UK government is expecting savings of tens-of-millions of pounds from G-Cloud procurement, with, deputy director of IT reform at the Cabinet Office, Alex Holmes, saying that procurement rates will rapidly increase over the year.

Mr Holmes described that SMEs will be a key focus of the new G-Cloud framework, saying: “Medium-sized departments will be putting tens-of-millions of pounds through the G-Cloud”.

As departments move to become more centralised, the government is now looking to secure the largest deal so far through the G-Cloud, with a new multimillion pound tender for a secure email provider.

Attacks against privatisation and plans to outsource services by trade union Napo have been criticised by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

Napo used the example of G4S’ failure to deliver on its security contract to the 2012 Olympics, with Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of Napo, saying that at risk individuals "need to be supervised by experienced staff who can motivate them and properly assess risk."

MoJ minister, Jeremy Wright, said in defence of outsourced services: "Reoffending rates have barely changed in a decade, and almost half of all prisoners are reconvicted within a year of their release. We cannot go on just doing more of the same."

The administration of 2e2 placed its datacentre customers in a predicament, with the potential for complete loss of service and data control. However a new agreement between 2e2 and telecommunications service provider Daisy Group will secure the datacentres services for customers including the NHS.

Upon entering into administration under FTI Consulting, customers had been asked to provide nearly £1m in funding from customers, to gain access to services including their data.

Daisy chief executive Matthew Riley, said: “Through the additional datacentre facilities Daisy is in a position to expand its data and hosting footprint, provide stability to existing 2e2 customers and offer additional resources to its own customers”.

Film studios are looking to the benefits of cloud hosting and services with VFX (visual effects) studios moving to render images through the cloud.

Studios have now started to use variable cloud services such as Amazon’s EC2 cloud to render images while retaining a high level of artistic quality.

Traditionally VFX studios would render digital images through an on-site data centre, but advances in cloud hosting technology have now allowed artists to move away from a reliance on traditional methods.