Industry news

Spanish banking giant Santander are considering the acquisition of Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks for £2 billion.

The acquisitions would allow Santander to increase its share of banking in the SME markets where both banks specialise.

Both Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks are owned by the National Bank of Australia, which is looking to sell on the banks as loss making organisations.

In the interview with the Independent, Santander UK's chief executive Ana Botin said: "We are currently working on plans to grow our retail business, our SME business, we are building a team for large corporates in the UK which we didn't have before."

Delhi will play host to the world’s largest IT offshore training centre this month as IT training giant Koenig Solutions opens the new institute.

The new centre contains over 50 classrooms and over 30 testing stations.

Koenig Solutions which specialises in offshore training provides training software including; Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Red Hat, Linux and Java. Koenig enjoys a strong market within the UK and over 400 UK individuals travel to India with the training organisation every year.

Major corporations including Warner Music, Universal Music, Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox have moved to support HMV.

The organisations have supported a rescue bid by consortium led by Hilco UK, and are rumoured to have backed the support with an offer to reduce merchandise price and provide increased credit terms.

HMV is currently being managed by Deloitte as administrators with stores continuing to trade on the high street.

Indian based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have secured the support and development of Nokia’s global business applications as the communications giant moves to consolidate services.

TCS will be involved in developing services, with a focus on application creation involved in the management of customer relationships, product lifecycles and resource planning.

TCS have in recent years focused on expanding into markets within Europe, with operations focused in Scandinavian countries including Iceland, Finland and Norway.

Møller-Maersk which specialises in global logistics and shipping has made significant savings through a contract with Flexera Software to return IT systems in-house.

The companies IT asset management (ITAM) had previously been outsourced to a managed service provider but the company believed that it had overpaid for the service and was in risk of software licence non-compliance.

The contract with Flexera has provided a multimillion dollar cost-saving for the shipping firm and has increased transparency and control.

Local authorities in Norfolk have joined together to create a new public sector network, designed to promote costs savings, greater flexibility and efficiencies.

Core council services are being shared between Broadland District Council, Borough Council of King's Lynn & West Norfolk, South Norfolk Council and North Norfolk District Council as part of a virtual private network (VPN).

The 100 Mbps network is provided by Claranet which provides full management and support of the service.

Huddle has enjoyed strong performance in 2012 through collaboration with the G-Cloud.

The content collaboration software vendor doubled the number of public sector contracts held in 2012 from 2011 to a total of 40 contracts.

Contracts secured through the G-Cloud include content collaboration service delivery to Essex County Fire and Rescue Services, Surrey County Council, Dorset County Council and the NHS.

Alastair Mitchell, CEO, Huddle reflected on the companies G-Cloud success: “the UK public sector is clearly placing cloud technology at the heart of its efforts to drive productivity, increase efficiencies and reduce IT costs”.

Google has purchased a new site in London with expectations that the new site will become the location of the organisations new headquarters.

The site situated at Kings Cross Central property development is 2.4 acres in size and is expected to be finished by 2016.

A Reuters source said that Google was investing £250 million in the site, Google’s current UK headquarters is situated at Victoria.

T-Mobile Austria, part of Deutsche Telekom, has transitioned support services to a cloud based platform.

Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Centre (CIC) was selected for its ability to provide high levels of flexibility and proven efficiencies. The service is expected to go love by 2013.

Werner Weiss, T-Mobile’s project manager said: “CIC’s flexibility, cloud deployment option, and value for the money were key in winning us over. However, the deciding factors were our very positive impressions based on customer reference site visits, and Interactive’s exemplary approach to project planning.”

The National Audit Office has highlighted five key risks to the value for money of projects included in the government’s national infrastructure plan.

The government expects £310 billion to be spent by 2015 and beyond on new infrastructure projects in sectors such as energy, rail, roads, water, waste, flood defences and digital communications. Such large-scale infrastructure projects pose significant challenges. With limited funds available, the government is looking to private companies to wholly own and finance around 64 per cent of the £310 billion, with the burden of funding likely to shift towards the public as consumers rather than taxpayers.

"Economic infrastructure keeps the country running. Demand for infrastructure is set to increase, fuelled by population growth, technological progress, climate change and congestion.

"But there is a lot at stake in taking forward the national infrastructure plan in an environment of straitened resources, with real risks to value for money and uncertainty about the sustainability of piling costs on to consumers.

"I have made a number of recommendations which look to the Treasury, departments and regulators to provide greater clarity on the costs which taxpayers and consumers will bear. Work is already in hand to drive down the costs of delivering new infrastructure and this should continue."

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office.