Industry news

La Caixa has agreed for its listed arm, CaixaBank, buy out their smaller rivial Banca Civica in a £915 deal. The deal valued the whole of Banca Civica at around €980, as La Caixa offered €1.97 per share and the deal makes La Caixa Spain’s biggest bank in terms of assets.

The deal comes as new government laws have encouraged mergers between banks after several collapsed following the bursting of the property bubble. Civica itself was formed out of combining four struggling regional banks. The merger will mean La Caixa will have around 14 million customers.

"The merger will help to consolidate the restructuring of the Spanish banking sector, by creating a leading bank in the Spanish financial system with an extensive regional presence, which will help support the country's economic development," the bank said.

The deal is expected to generate cost savings and other benefits to the vaue of around €540 million by 2014.

IBM and Accenture have proposed to create 500 new developer roles in the UK and India for work on the Department for Work and Pensions’ Universal Credit system.

The outsourcing contract, worth £525 million, is expected to be carried out next year and by having some of the development work done offshore, the DWP expects to save "both cost and time", but has created controversy.

Paul Macpherson, from the department's Universal Credit Design Technology, stated: "I truly believe we have an offshore capability which provides world-class expertise and we are leveraging the best resources Accenture and IBM, in particular, have to offer. We are looking to maximise the use of offshore development in the interests of both cost and time.”

DWP also defended the decision as they insisted that no existing jobs in the UK are being sent overseas under the plans and are exploring how previously off-shored could be moved back to the UK.

The Universal Credit system will unify all current means-tested benefit systems to create one, single income-replacement benefit for all working age adults.

Oracle Co president Mark Hurd will be joined by Balaji Yelamanchili, Senior Vice President of Analytics and Performance Management on 4th April. The event will also include updates on new applications aimed at SAP customers.

The executives will "unveil the latest advances in Oracle's strategy for placing analytics into the hands of every one of your decision-makers," according an announcement on the Oracle website.

Oracle's Exalytics machine is set to be a main focus of the event, with "integrated analytic applications" for Oracle's enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software lines being discussed. "New analytic solutions for SAP customers" is also on the agenda.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) partner arvato is increasing investment in its Manila operations to support several BPO programmes.

arvato has already increased its highly skilled workforce in the region by 50% in the last six months. The expansion plans will enable a 50% growth in headcount over the next 12-18 months and revenue growth of up to 25% over the next three years from the region.

Debra Maxwell, Country Manager, Philippines and Global BPO Director, arvato, said: “Our Manila location provides organisations with a highly skilled, flexible and reliable workforce combined with a secure, high-spec infrastructure that can be mobilised in days, not months. Expanding our capabilities in Manila enables us to grow our partnerships with existing clients, as well as provide a compelling proposition for organisations looking to reduce costs and standardise global operations.”

This investment supports arvato’s strategy of providing secure infrastructure, high-quality dedicated client teams, and best practice frameworks for global organisations seeking to align and standardise processes for their global customer base.

A study carried out for service management software provider BMC, shows that as much as seventy two percent of senior information officers believe cloud computing has increased pressure on IT divisions.

The study of 327 chief information officers within enterprises, showed that CIOs believed that cloud computing is seen as a way to circumvent IT teams, and that the notion that cloud services could provide cost reduction and streamlined services, has increased the pressure on IT teams to deliver results.

The survey has raised concerns by CIOs that businesses risked increased security issues when cloud software was used to bypass IT divisions. Dominic Wellington, cloud computing manager at BMC, said: "If someone from the business team copies the data across to Amazon's public cloud offering, then suddenly the business's sensitive data is sitting out there in the open.”

The government has announced twelve networking firms to provide the Public Services Network framework alongside BT, Fujistu and Virgin Media.

The PSN has been created in order to combine communication services into a single network, in order to reduce costs and streamline services. The twelve suppliers include several SMEs along with larger industry names in part of the government’s promise to increase the use of SMEs within Whitehall.

The construction of the framework is expected to be worth between £500 million and £3 billion. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, said: "We are confident that the PSN programme will substantially reduce the cost of communication services across government."

Government suppliers in the private sector are rushing to gain billions of pounds of new work from the overhaul of the benefits system, including the reassessment of the disability allowance.

A range of contracts from £ 300 million to £5 billion are expected to be awarded to companies including G4s, Serco and Capita over the coming months, as the coalition moves to rapidly expand its outsourcing drive.

Nina Zamo, policy and campaigns officer at charity Papworth Trust, said in regard to reform of disability support: “there were obviously concerns that it may replicate the problems with the Work Capability Assessment. This test for personal independent payments has to be fair.”

Iceland looks to move its public sector to open source software within one year as it begins to edge towards financial recovery.

Iceland will join other governments such as France and US who are making a move to open source software, with the aim to save resources with lower costs while avoiding restrictive licensing terms.

Tryggvi Bjorgvinsson, project leader, reported: "The goal of the project is not to migrate public institutions to free and open source software in one single year but to lay a solid foundation for such a migration which institutions can base their migration plans on."

Research published by the European commission shows that European school leaves do not have basic skills in digital and IT technologies.

The research predicted a shortfall of 700,000 school leavers without IT and digital skills by 2015. At present over 50 percent of young people are unemployed in Italy and Greece, with an expected reduction in low-skill jobs and increase in high-skill jobs over the coming years.

Antonio Tajani, European commissioner for industry and entrepreneurship, said: "Young people need to appreciate the professional aspects of the new digital world. This is more important than ever in the current economic context.”

Arvato has successfully developed and implemented a bespoke loyalty platform for Valero Energy Ltd.’s Texaco branded Star Rewards card based loyalty programme.

The Star Rewards loyalty programme, launched in 1986, has progressed over the years to a card based loyalty scheme that currently processes customer rewards earned in over one million transactions a month across 850 Texaco branded service stations in the UK.

Tim Medcalf, General Manager of arvato’s loyalty business, said, “The development and implementation of the Texaco brand Star Rewards loyalty platform has been an opportunity to showcase arvato’s approach to providing right-sized technology solutions for complex multi-stakeholder loyalty programmes.”