Industry news

Capita have been awarded a ten-year contract to provide outsourced BPO services to Barnet Council, including customer service and support services.

The deal is expected to reduce overall costs with expected savings of £125.4 million over a decade.

Barnet Council leader Richard Cornelius said: "The bottom line is that this will give us £120m to spend on public services in Barnet that we would not otherwise have”.

The outsourcing of services has attracted controversy in regard to the loss of council jobs with a predicted loss of 180 jobs over the course of the contract.

Two UK banks are to face fines of over $2 billion in the US over money laundering and breaking sanctions.

HSBC and Standard Chartered are both likely to pay hundreds of millions to settle US charges. HSBC is facing charges stemming from money laundering charges while Standard Chartered is facing action due to links with Iran.

Despite initial stock falls both banks have seen growth despite the US charges.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced plans to bring the manufacturing of the next line of Macs to the US along with the design in 2013.

The next line of Mac computers will see around $62 million in investment, a small fraction of total Apple manufacturing spend.

Mr Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that: "Next year we're going to bring some production to the US," adding that, “This doesn't mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we'll be working with people and we'll be investing our money."

David Cameron has announced further investment for Tech City totalling £50 million to develop Old Street roundabout adding space for future start-ups.

The investment will include the creation of a civic centre including classrooms, workshop space and printing facilities in addition to super-fast broadband infrastructure.

Cameron said in a statement: “"As well as backing the businesses of today, we are creating an aspiration nation and also backing the innovative, high-growth businesses of the future".

The government has announced that Virgin Rail will continue to operate the west coast rail line for a further two more years.

The short-term contract had been discussed and expected after the failure of the west coast procurement process in October.

The new contract will see the use of new carriages with greater numbers of seats and a new service between Glasgow and London.

IBM has finalised the purchase of Kenexa who provide HR services and applications for $1.3 billion USD.

The Pennsylvanian based company provides HR applications designed to streamline services and allow for automation in areas such as performance management and recruitment.

The acquisition began in August and has been undertaken in order to provide IBM with the ability to enhance current services through integration with Kenexa applications.

BT have released details of a drop of rental rates of ultra-fast fibre optic broadband, charging rental rates of £38 rather than £60 per month for use of its cable infrastructure.

The new price will be introduced from June 2013 and comes after the telecommunications giant face heavy criticism for low fibre uptake compared to the rest of Europe.

Mike Galvin, Managing Director NGA at BT Openreach described the planned cost cut, saying: “It is now time for us to focus further on FTTP and I am pleased to say that we are making it more affordable than ever. I am sure that small businesses will welcome this major price cut and I am also sure that our fibre on demand plans will be of great interest.”

The NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB) is looking to outsource GP IT services to third-party suppliers.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will decide what services are provided by local suppliers and what services are delivered internally.

The new procurement system will come into place by April 2013 when the CCGs take control of the commissioning of services. The G-Cloud is expected to feature heavily in future procurement processes, being already employed to source e-mail providers for the NHS.

IT services giant Atos has invested in an Indian wind farm in order to offset carbon emissions generated by services and data centres.

The move comes as Atos seeks to halve its carbon footprint of 170, 000 tonnes by 2015. The move co-insides with reducing power usage across the company and developing modern green facilities.

Atos corporate social responsibility executive Phillipe Mareine said that: "To become a zero carbon company, Atos strives to improve carbon performance in all areas of its activities," adding that, "In this respect, we have launched many initiatives including remote working, zero email, building energy management, and carbon audits.

A range of new cyber security measures have been announced by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude including the creation of a new ‘Cyber Reserve’ force.

In a statement to parliament Maude detailed the creation of the force consisting of different nationalities and skill sets organised under the MoD to combat IT security threats.

The planned creation of a new UK National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) was also revealed, designed to co-ordinate responses to security events and threats.