Industry news

Cloud computing will allow financial services to operate more efficiently and at a lower cost, while also providing the ability to offer services that were previously economically unviable, Gartner finds.

Cloud services for core banking systems will be a top priority for Financial CIOs in the next four years, a recent survey showed.

The Gartner Executive Programs annual CIO survey was conducted by analyst firm Gartner and surveyed 2,014 CIOs in 50 countries.

The words 'Iceland' and 'Cloud' have instilled fear in every air traveller for the past few years. However, the two words now exist very much in harmony, in the form of cloud computing.

The country has been ear-marked as world hub for the future of online cloud computing due to its vast quantities of free, renewable energy and cool climate. It's the perfect location for sustainable data centres - and that includes cloud computing providers.

There's no need to worry about the ash. Protecting such centres from volcanic ash is much safer and easier than protecting them from floods and earthquakes – two natural disasters prone to the current word-centres of cloud computing.

Following successful trials of their energy efficient Odeum green servers, VeryPC has secured a large order from GreenQloud, the official Icelandic cloud. This deal is set to drive VeryPC into triple digit growth next year.

Under the deal, VeryPC will supply GreenQloud with large quantities of efficient servers that together contain thousands of processing cores and petabytes of data storage. These will power a huge number of virtual servers that will be used by a diverse range of clients around the world – clients that want to lower their carbon footprint.

More than 1,000 jobs are under threat after retailer Carphone Warehouse announced it was pulling the plug on its Best Buy stores in the UK.

The company has launched a consultation about closing the 11 shops as it shifts its focus to selling more electronics goods through its Carphone Warehouse outlets.

Carphone hopes to find the "large majority" of the 1,100 staff roles elsewhere within the organisation.

The Government has announced a ground-breaking partnership with 26 organisations to deliver a new era of consumer empowerment.

The businesses, consumer bodies and regulators involved are all committed to working with Government to achieve its vision for midata. And all are endorsing the key principle that data should be released back to consumers.

Google, Visa, Lloyds Banking Group and British Gas are some of the companies that have announced their support.

Launching the midata vision, Consumer Affairs Minister, Edward Davey said: “This is the way the world is going and the UK is currently leading the charge. We see a real opportunity here, but others, including the US and EU, are also showing real interest in the programme and the economic benefits it can deliver.

Hertfordshire county council is set to launch a council-wide e-market system, which will allow council employees to purchase adult social care services and members of the public to buy the likes of home care or day services.

The authority is working with Serco to develop the system, which will eventually include other applications for trading with schools and other items people can buy from the council. Hertfordshire has decided to go live with an adult social care application first, which it hopes to "soft launch" in April 2012.

Seeking to expand its content solutions business and gain better foothold in the education sector, SPi Global, the largest Filipino-owned BPO firm, has bought one of the most successful publishing BPO companies in India, the pioneering Laserwords Private Limited.

“With the combined strength of two leaders in the global publishing space, our clients will get even more comprehensive suite of solutions for print, electronic and database products,” remarked SPi Global President and CEO Maulik Parekh.

British Airways-owner International Airlines Group (IAG) is close to agreeing a deal worth around £300m with Germany's Lufthansa to buy Bmi's main business, including its prized take-off and landing slots at Heathrow.

The sale and closing of the deal remain subject to conditions including a binding purchase agreement, further due diligence and regulatory clearances. It is envisaged that the purchase agreement will be signed in the coming weeks and the aim is for the transaction to be completed in the first quarter of 2012.

The Indian government has clarified that personal data sent to India by customers outsourcing IT work there will not be covered by India's new privacy rules.

The Indian data privacy rules require companies to get written consent from individuals about the use of the sensitive personal information they collect.

This would have proved to be very problemative for the outsourcing industry due to the amount of contact details which go through contact centres and other operations on a daily basis.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has awarded Accenture a contract for up to seven years to deliver application development and maintenance services for its customer-facing systems including delivery of elements of the IT solution for Universal Credit, the U.K. government’s program to simplify working-age benefits systems into a single streamlined system.

The value of the Accenture contract could range from £50 million to £70 million per year, depending on Departmental demand for IT services.

Accenture has chosen to partner with Atos based on its strong track record of successfully delivering IT services for DWP, and with a particular focus on delivering secure online citizen self-service applications. As Accenture’s main sub-contractor, Atos will provide the full range of application development and maintenance services.

“Our work with the Department for Work and Pensions will help to further improve the service they deliver to reflect the changing needs of U.K. citizens,” said Mark Lyons, Accenture’s U. K. and Ireland managing director for Health & Public Service. “Accenture will help DWP drive significant and sustainable cost savings. This new contract builds on our longstanding relationship with DWP and the successful delivery of similar projects with other public-sector clients, based on the deep industry skills and insight from our global network.”

Owner of the Mirror newspapers, Trinity Mirror, has almost completed its migration to Google Apps for Business.

The British newspaper and magazine publisher signed up to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) productivity and collaboration suite in August this year, having exhausted ways of cost-effectively maintaining its legacy email platform in-house.

It will also use the range of features from the SaaS suite that include calendaring, instant messaging and document processing and sharing, to speed up internal processes and encourage teamwork and innovation among its 6,500 staff.