Industry news

IT services and consulting giant Cognizant and Mobile banking company Monitise have announced the creation of a global alliance to promote mobile engagement within finical institutions.

The alliance is designed to help global financial institutions to respond to the movement towards mobile financial services.

Alastair Lukies, Chief Executive of Monitise Group, said: “Our strategy involves extending our Monitise Enterprise Platform to the world’s leading banks and payment companies to help them improve and expand their customer relationships.”

Prasad Chintamaneni, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Cognizant’s Financial Services practice commented that, “By combining Cognizant’s extensive expertise and experience in delivering innovative domain and technology solutions to financial institutions with Monitise’s acclaimed platform-based mobile solutions, we are well positioned to help our clients develop compelling mobile banking, payments, and commerce solutions”.

The contract for the running of the West Coast main line has been cancelled, after significant flaws emerged in the franchise process.

This announcement will mean that no franchise will be awarded the railway contract after Virgin’s current contract expires on the 9th of December, with state-owned Directly Operated Railways to run the service instead.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has indicated that key staff involved in the process will be suspended, after flaws emerged in how bidding risks were evaluated.

Such flaws have been linked to the models associated with costs and levers associated with service delivery. A failure in applying effective benchmarking from within the Civil Service resulted in the creation of a untenable contract.

Martyn Hart, Chairman, National Outsourcing Association said: "Another government outsourcing fiasco, developed by people who appear not to understand outsourcing at its most basic level. You’d think that the Department for Transport would understand what drives costs on a railway, but it would seem not. "

DfT spokesman, Philip Rutnam, said “The errors exposed by our investigation are deeply concerning. They show a lack of good process and a lack of proper quality assurance.”

A YouGov survey commissioned by software company Citrix has revealed that nearly half of all businesses who adopted flexible working practices during the Olympic Games plan to continue the practice.

48 percent of businesses said that flexible working will become more important in the next five years, with 56 percent saying that flexibility was needed to attract talent.

47 percent of businesses surveyed said that they planned to keep flexible working or reintroduce the strategy in the near future.

Intel’s investment arm Intel Capital has announced plans to carry out a global IT investment programme, valued at $40 million.

Asia is to be a major investment target for the programme, with the technology giant investing in five Asian based companies.

The investment programme is designed to promote the employment of microprocessors, with acquisitions and mergers aimed at long term rather than short term investments.

Tesco have reported a 12 percent fall in group pre-tax profits, as the supermarket giant reports the first profit drop in 15 years.

While UK sales have risen over the last three months, decline in Europe and Asia has led to a reduction in overall group profits.

Rival Sainsbury’s have reported a 1.7 percent increase in sales with expansion plans having been funded by non-food sales.

The sale of 4G mobile spectrum should be used to create affordable housing and provide funding for newcomers to the housing market.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls announced at the Labour party conference said that the expected revenue of £3-4 billion from the sale, should be invested in creating 100,000 new affordable properties, saying:“So with this one-off windfall from the sale of the 4G spectrum, let's cut through the dither and rhetoric and actually do something.”

Invest in construction would also provide work for the building industry, helping to slow the fall of jobs in construction.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have given the go-ahead to Vodafone and O2 to merge elements of their networks in order to increase the speed of 4G services rollout in the UK.

The new joint venture will be called CTI Ltd and will see the consolidation of UK network infrastructure while remaining individually competitive.

CTI will have access to an infrastructure containing as many as 18,500 masts which will allow for greater coverage, Ronan Dunne, CEO Telefónica UK, said: “One physical grid, running independent networks, will mean broader coverage and, crucially, investment in innovation and better competition for the customer”.

Three major Xstrata shareholders plan to oppose the merger, with the prospect of other shareholders turning against the merger.

Opposition to the deal includes Threadneedle Investments which owns 0.29 percent of Xstrata and Knight Vinke, owners 0.5 percent.

Despite the opposition to the move, the deal is expected to be confirmed by a majority stake. The Independent reported that shareholders, despite opposing the move, were resigned to the fact that the deal would go ahead, after Qatar as main stakeholders backed the move.

Just before the final deadline, Glencore and Xstrata have reached agreement regarding a £56 billion merger between the two mining giants.

Xstrata is prepared to a recommended the deal to shareholders after differences regarding the board composition were dealt with.

The agreement was finalised just hours before a deadline, which would have seen both sides walk away from the deal.

Google’s €75 million Dublin datacentre has become operational. The centre is the location for critical services for Google products including; cloud services , Gmail and Google maps.

The new state of the art datacentre, which took nearly a year to complete, reduces power requirements through harnessing the surrounding the climate.

The new centre will create a range of opportunities within the Irish job market, including such roles as IT support, security and mechanical and electrical engineers.

Richard Bruton, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, said of the opening: “Cloud computing forms a key part of the government’s action plan for jobs. Our technological infrastructure is improving and cloud computing is one area where our climate gives us advantages”.