Industry news

Value Wales, a division of the Welsh Government, has initiated an ‘all Wales IT equipment and associated services framework agreement’, which will run from October this year, for two years with options to extend for a further two.

After a comprehensive tendering process, Softcat has been selected as one of only eight suppliers on Lot1 of the framework agreement to provide IT equipment and associated services into the public sector within Wales. This is for products that deliver – or allow users to access – services, including PCs, monitors, laptops, handheld devices, tablet devices, netbooks and thin-client devices, together with related maintenance, warranty, software and support services.

A spokesperson for the Welsh Government said: "The ITEAS III framework underlines the Welsh Government’s commitment and compliance to, respectively, both the National ICT Strategy and Digital Strategy for Wales, providing public sector organisations across Wales with the ability and facility to procure excellent IT products and services. All suppliers tendering were evaluated against a robust set of criteria, including technical expertise, performance and delivery, account and contract management, sustainability / environmental credentials and of course, value for money."

TPI, the Information Services Group (ISG) companies, has said that public sector budget pressures are driving an increase in the adoption of outsourcing as a strategy to improve operational excellence in Continental Europe and a wave of contract renegotiations in the United Kingdom.

The number of public sector outsourcing contracts awarded in Continental Europe jumped by more than 70 per cent in the first half of the year, according to data from TPI, the leading independent sourcing data and advisory firm in the world. The public sector’s total contract value (TCV) on the continent grew 40 percent.

For service providers this will mean placing a greater emphasis on forging close working partnerships with public sector bodies. Duncan Aitchison, Partner and President, EMEA, TPI, said: “Understanding the difficult path the government now has to take and negotiating the balance between providing a value proposition, with services that help governments achieve often complex goals in a streamlined way will be key for outsourcers moving forward.”

The company, formed 18 months ago from the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, said the cuts would affect employees at its sites in London, Bristol, Hatfield and Darlington, who were briefed on Wednesday about the changes.

Everything Everywhere said the changes reflected “a new phase focused on accelerating the delivery of its ambitions” and that it “recognised and would like to thank” the affected employees, who will be placed in a three-month consultation period.

The Guinness Partnership has tendered for a solution and implementation partner for the supply, installation, implementation and support of a replacement finance system including provision of core accounting applications and functionality.

Interested suppliers must be able to demonstrate their ability to provide and support a high quality, highly resilient, cost effective finance application which will impact positively on both the delivery of customer services and efficiencies within a shared services environment.

The new finance system will cost between £700,000 and £1.5m.

VeriFone Systems, Inc. has announced it has acquired Global Bay Mobile Technologies, a leading provider of next-generation mobile retail solutions. The acquisition is the latest development in VeriFone's strategy to bring the power of mobile into the world of retail and payments, extending new smartphone- and tablet-based shopping and payment experiences to retail organizations. Terms of the transaction, which closed effective today, were not disclosed.

"Global Bay's mobile retail applications complement our vision to deliver rich commerce solutions that open up new opportunities for merchants to engage their customers in deeper, more meaningful ways that will generate increased profitability and shopper loyalty," said Jennifer Miles, VeriFone executive vice president, North America. "Retailers and consumers can continue to look to VeriFone to provide the most sophisticated and secure commerce experiences."

National Outsourcing Association Research

The National Outsourcing Association will be announcing two new pieces of research at the Summit and Awards next week.

“The Economic Benefit of Outsourcing and Shared Services to United Kingdom” has been produced in conjunction Kingston Business School and examines all available academic articles worldwide, and compares them with practitioner experience.

“Driving Innovation through collaboration” is an NOA / KMPG joint research project that examines attitudes to driving, funding, supporting and measuring innovation in outsourcing.

Now in its 8th year, the revered NOA Awards are firmly established as the highlight of the outsourcing industry calendar, attracting over 500 delegates annually. Combined with the respected NOA Summit, this makes for a must-attend event for outsourcing professionals in all sectors.

The terms “globalisation” and “commoditisation” strike fear in the hearts of today’s executives. In response, “innovation” is being bandied about as the new Holy Grail in business. Yet, while innovative ideas are easy; implementing them is hard.

Back in Business Week’s August 1, 2005 issue, Bruce Nussbaum offered some advice for those business leaders who on one side were surrounded by the never‐satisfied customers, and on the other, were fighting against three billion new competitors from former socialist countries: “Listen closely. There’s a new conversation under way across America that may well change your future. If you work for Procter & Gamble or General Electric, you already know what’s going on.”

The globalisation of white‐collar work is the new trend beyond sending blue‐collar jobs to Asia and beyond.

Even much of the so‐called “knowledge economy,” once thought of as the last bastion of America’s economic might, has been digitised and beamed to China, India, Russia and beyond.

In short, knowledge work is being digitised, globalised and commoditised. So, what’s left for companies wanting to avoid commodity purgatory?

The Innovation Economy

Nussbaum describes an innovation economy as, “innovation which is based on an intimate understanding of consumer culture—the ability to determine what people want even before they can articulate it.”

“You’re thinking ‘this is all hype,’ aren’t you? Just another ‘newest and biggest’ fad, right? Wrong. Ask the 940 senior executives from around the world who said in a recent Boston Consulting Group Inc. Survey that increasing top‐line revenues through innovation has become essential to success in their industry.”

Nussbaum also reports that nearly 96% of all innovation attempts fail to beat targets for return on investment, leading to talk of “innovation frustration” in the corner offices.

Indeed, is it time to innovate innovation itself—as a repeatable business process.

What is a business process? It’s how work gets done, which leads us to Do the Work – a manifesto by Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it’s not about better ideas, it’s actually about doing the work of innovation.

That, in turn, leads to another question, “How does work work in a hyper‐connected world of total global competition?” Just as the world of business transformed from the Industrial Age, where components of competitive advantage (land, labor and capital) are now undifferentiating commodities, we’ve witnessed a so‐called Information Age where knowledge was king.

However, today knowledge is a global commodity.

In today’s wired world, business success absolutely depends on innovation, not just what is commoditised knowledge.

And it’s not just a single innovation, it’s about setting the pace of innovation in your industry. It’s also about getting into new industries as you seek to serve the total needs of your customers. In today’s connected world, business innovation goes hand in glove with IT innovation.

Open‐innovation efforts are also on the rise. There are more and more examples of innovation efforts whose success is due to the thoughtful use of non traditional, external sources of information and ideas. Nevertheless, significant barriers exist in many enterprises to capitalise on the potential benefits of open innovation.

On the other hand, open innovation does not necessarily mean external innovation. Internal, non traditional participants can open up the innovation process and contribute increased value.

However, current research focuses specifically on how to open up the innovation process to external participants— that is, to people residing outside the boundaries of the enterprise.

No matter how formal or informal the innovation initiative, using a process to transform latent ideas into value‐creating business innovations is key. There are vast numbers of innovation processes out there, but all encompass the following steps:

1. Scope

2. Capture ideas

3. Evaluate and select

4. Develop

5. Implement

6. Champion

Each of these steps can be opened up to external contributors, with varying degrees of difficulty, risk and reward.

Current innovation research focuses on how and what to open in each step, including the benefits and drawbacks of each.

For those of you don’t own one already, it’s time to start thinking about renting a tux. Because one of my favourite nights of the year is almost upon us…the National Outsourcing Association Awards, which is the climax of the NOA Summit on 9th and 10th November.

It’s less than a week away, and preparations are coming to a close. The winners have been chosen, but remain a secret nearly as closely guarded as the New York Stock Exchange’s cloud data centre. And that has a moat and a drawbridge!

If you want to hear about other outsourcing projects take best practice to the extreme, study game changing innovations and meet the game changers in the flesh, then come join us at the Summit & Awards. It’s your best chance to broaden, expand and enhance your outsourcing knowledge base, and network with a bunch of people in the same boat as you.

If I seem excited that’s because I am. We’ve got comedy from Imran Yusef, a Bollywood dance workshop courtesy of Wipro and a massive array of best practice examples on show.

See you there!

ITC Infotech, Heineken and Insight took part in a webinar on the 22nd September 2011 which discussed in detail the issues, risks and processes associated with migration to Windows 7, from each perspective

Although Windows 7 is rolling out quickly to favourable reviews from a consumer perspective, 75% corporate enterprises are yet to complete their migration to Windows 7 and many are in the early stages of planning. This is because, from the enterprise perspective, like any major update or operating system migration, migrating can be challenging, time consuming, and costly. In any case, all enterprises will need to set about migrating to Windows 7 because it promises the productivity, reliability, performance and security enhancements they need, and primarily because Microsoft has scheduled a tight April 2014 deadline to pull out enterprise support for Windows XP.

This webinar hosted by ITC Infotech in association with Heineken International and Insight addressed issues and risks associated with successful on-time migration to Windows 7.

Webinar Highlights

• Issues and risks associated with a federated and distributed enterprise- strategies that hold promise to manage the transformation- A case study of Heineken International

• Typical challenges of planning and migrating to Windows 7

• Challenges of full enterprise rollout-A case study of Insight Enterprises.

Issues and Risks Associated with a Federated and Distributed Enterprise

Heineken International– Windows 7 Migration Case Study

Heineken is one of the world’s leading brewers with a wide international presence through a global network of distributors and breweries. Heineken owns and manages one of the world’s leading portfolios of beer brands.

With a portfolio of globally distributed operating companies, Heineken has a very federated and distributed enterprise IT landscape. The organization has 48,000 workstations running over 2000 windows applications.

Heineken started the Windows 7 upgrade in January 2011 with the support of ITC Infotech at the 2nd and 3rd level to:

• Standardize and globalize the workplace environment

• Attain the flexibility to cope with local diversity

• Improve user experience and decrease TCO

Issues and risks Heineken faces as it migrates to Windows 7

Application compatibility, ensuring applications will install and run predictably on Windows 7, is at the heart of Heineken‘s Windows 7 migration issues. Simplifying the management and deployment of applications during Windows 7 migration poses the most time consuming challenge. Another key issue Heineken faces is managing the change in terms of the time it will really take individuals to adapt to the new features and functions and be able to operate with the same speed and efficiency as they do now. Heineken also battles with the risk of not being able to complete enterprise wide rollout by April 2014(when Microsoft plans to pull out enterprise support for Windows XP).

Issues and Risks Associated with a Full Enterprise Rollout

Insight Enterprises - Windows 7 Enterprise Rollout Case Study

Insight is a global provider of information technology (IT) hardware, software and service solutions to business and public sector organizations with Operations in 21 countries, serving clients in 191 countries worldwide. Evidently, Insight had a very distributed IT landscape with applications portfolio of over 200 applications. Insight was using Windows XP with the latest service place and was quite sceptical about the Windows rollout. Along with the upcoming expiration of enterprise support for Windows XP, the company was motivated by an opportunity to acquire new tools for tightening network security, accelerating PC performance, and improving employee productivity to move forward with a companywide upgrade to Windows7. Also, the company placed an emphasis on minimizing the impact of the upgrade on employees.

Challenges faced by Insight Enterprises in migrating to Windows 7

Ensuring application compatibility and deploying applications for optimal performance and functionality posed the most challenging and time-consuming challenges. The IT team spent months before the deployment performing readiness testing on more than 200 applications. Memory was surprisingly an issue with the OS running extremely slow on less than 2 Gb.

Typical Challenges of Planning and Migrating to Windows 7

• Application compatibility

• Hardware compatibility

• Assessment & remediation of applications and hardware

• Project planning

• Windows 7 deployment

Benefits of Migrating to Windows 7

Windows 7 offers desktop and server optimization, management flexibility faster PC performance, while strengthening its network security capabilities. Deploying Windows 7 offers gains in productivity across the organization as more employees take advantage of enhanced desktop tools and simplified access to network resources. A central benefit of Windows 7 is its extensive cost savings, which can be as much as 20% in direct costs and impressive IT cost savings with MDOP. So even though Windows 7 migration has key benefits for an organization, the risk of failure and the enormity of the project may be intimidating and can have significant impact on an IT organization in terms of time, budget and internal reputation.

The ITC Infotech Approach to Windows 7 Migration

ITC Infotech has a clearly defined process of helping organizations migrate to Windows 7. This involves determining client readiness by checking hardware and application compatibility, ensuring security from a policy and governance perspective, image engineering, migration and deployment, and finally operation of application - end-user acceptance and helpdesk support.

Nokia has launched a free wi-fi trial service across central London, with 26 hotspots available across the capital.

The trial will continue until the end of the year and if deemed a success will rolled out permanently at the start of 2012.

The free wi-fi service is currently concentrated around the West End, with Westminster and Victoria also hosting hotspots. Many of the areas are reportedly based around old phoneboxes owned by Nokia’s partner Spectrum Interactive.