Industry news

Birmingham Metropolitan College have reduced the cost of IT equipment procurement by 40 percent through the employment of a cloud based benchmarking system.

The college employed the benchmarking software ITelligence from Mercato which provides users with information on the wholesale price paid by suppliers.

Jamie Smith, director of systems and policy development at the college, said: “Like all organisations in the current economic climate, the college needs to get more for less”.

Network giant Cisco are set to acquire cloud service provider Meraki for €1.2 billion.

Meraki with over 10,000 companies using its services is focused upon medium-sized businesses, the acquisition comes as the networking giant seeks to expand into the cloud services market.

In a statement, Cisco senior vice president, Rob Soderbery, said: "The acquisition of Meraki enables Cisco to make simple, secure, cloud managed networks available to our global customer base of mid-sized businesses and enterprises".

Private firms now treat one in five NHS patents according to a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

The rise in the treatment of NHS patents through private firms increased after GPs began to offer patients a wider list of locations to receive treatment.

The employment of the private sector to provide patient care rose under the labour government as a way to reduce waiting times and increase patient capacity.

David Worskett, director of the NHS Partners Network said: "While the overall proportion of NHS care delivered by the independent sector remains very low, at less than 5%, independent providers are very pleased to be making what is clearly a valued contribution to the NHS and patients in these challenging times.”

Concern has increased within elements of the NHS regarding the effect of privatisation with a spokesman from the British Medical Association (BMA) saying: “The BMA has had concerns for a number of years about the ethos of promoting competition between different providers within the NHS as this could lead to a fragmentation and possible destabilisation of patient services".

Nick Patience, explains the issues surrounding the disposal of information and the consequences businesses will face if they do not have a comprehensive information governance policy in place

Businesses today are dealing with a seemingly unstoppable increase in the volume of data they are creating, receiving and storing, and this presents significant challenges when it comes to effectively managing, analysing and understanding the information and insights contained within. In order to maintain a competitive advantage, companies must extract the key information from their structured or unstructured data, whilst making sure that any unneeded data is disposed of efficiently.

If large amounts of data are left unmanaged, businesses can be faced with burgeoning storage costs, increased legal costs and, in some cases, it can even cause system malfunctions. In addition to this, storing vast amounts of information across disparate locations makes it more difficult to identify and utilize business critical information. It is vital for companies to understand that all of their data cannot be kept forever and appreciate the importance of only retaining the information that is relevant to the business. However, businesses must be aware of, and comply with regulations and legal standards when disposing of unwanted data. Those that fail to do so could find themselves facing potentially expensive legal proceedings and fines. It is therefore critical to implement defensible disposal, through information governance policies and processes that ensure organisations do not leave themselves open to legal action.

Courts today don’t take any lenience on companies that claim to have “innocently” destroyed data, and a finding of ‘spoliation’ can certainly lead to losing a winnable case and very serious penalties. The spoliation of data doesn’t necessarily have to be intentional. Technological advances in the 21st Century make it a lot easier to create, delete and alter any kind of electronic data. Data can now easily be destroyed, altered or damaged by the click of a mouse, a stroke of a key or completely automated computer processes. This kind of misfortune resulting from human error is difficult to prevent. However, we often see companies instructing employees to delete information without regulation, enforcement and auditing, which is completely illogical and can be more damaging than not deleting the information all.

There have been numerous cases where companies have been reprimanded for holding organised deletion days, or “shred days”, which have led to the spoliation of data needed for future litigation. A good example of this occurred when an Arthur Andersen partner sent an email message to employees working on the Enron account, reminding them to “comply with the firm’s documentation and retention policy”. The Andersen partner didn’t order the destruction or shredding of evidence, but because anticipation of future litigation was potentially obvious, the implication in her email was to “get rid of your suspect data”. The timing of the email message also created suspicion, in that just 21 minutes separated her e-mail from an entry in a record of her current projects in which she wrote that she was working on a case involving potential violations of federal security laws.

This case highlights the need for companies to adopt a watertight information governance process that includes a thorough defensible disposal strategy. A structured system would have been capturing, indexing, applying retention processes, protecting content on litigation hold and efficiently disposing of the irrelevant content on a regularly scheduled basis, avoiding any potential legal fallout.

Big data presents a huge opportunity for those willing to think and act quickly. Setting up a defensible disposal system is clearly an integral part of this. The build-up of data is going to continue growing at an incredible rate, with data production estimated to be 44 times greater in 2020 than it was in 2009. If companies don’t act now, we will see desperate measures of deletion, like that displayed by the Arthur Anderson partner, that will inevitably lead to potential law suits and cause the potential loss of million.

Network specialists Cisco have entered into acquisition proceedings for Cloupia, in a deal expected to be worth €125million.

Cloupia provides automating datacentre hardware, the patented technology will be added to Cisco’s increasing software portfolio.

The acquisition is the very latest of a series of high profile buy-outs by Cisco and is the 8th company takeover in 2012. The deal is expected to be finalised by the second-quarter of 2013.

The US Air Force will scrap a significant ERP (enterprise resource project) after the project delivered poor capability for cost.

Over €1 billion had been spent on the project before the Air Force determined that a estimated further €1.1 billion would have to be invested in order to continue the ERP at a reduced level.

A spokesman said that the project had “not yielded any significant military capability," and that the USAF would instead be “developing an entirely new strategy versus revamping the ECSS system of record again".

The Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local have become the first to be hosted under the new site.

The new domain will also include public sector agencies and bodies, with the Building Regulations Advisory Committee, Driving Standards Agency and the Planning Inspectorate having already been transitioned to the GOV.UK site.

GOV.UK which went live last month has been designed to host all department sites, generating savings of over £50 million a year.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said that the new site will offer improved services: “Information will be easier to access and more open, and we will save the taxpayer millions of pounds in the process".

Energy giant and owner of British Gas, Centrica, have reported that it is on track to make £1.4 billion after tax profit in 2012.

In a report to shareholders today Centrica said that the company was on track to make a six percent increase on profits from 2011 despite reduced business in certain departments due to the global recession.

Subsidiary British Gas announced an increase in energy prices in October which followed increases from other energy firms.

The shareholder report comes during an investigation by the FSA over an industry whistle-blower’s claims that energy markets have been manipulated.

Cisco Systems have moved to build small cellular stations in response to the high demand from mobile network operators as customers use increased Wi-Fi.

The small cellular stations provide network operators with increased coverage and are popular within built up areas that face increased usage.

The move will bring Cisco into direct competition with other communication infrastructure manufacturers, however the company will focus to specialise in small stations rather than tower based stations.

The UK government have ranked 6th in a 6 monthly data request report from Google published every 6 months, showing information requests from global governments.

The UK ranked behind other EU countries including Germany and France, asking 1,425 times for data from the information giant.

Google detailed that it had complied with 56 percent of requests from the UK in the first 6 months of 2012, refusing requests including the removal of a video hosted on YouTube that complained of racism within a local police agency.