Industry news

Nearly in 3 SMEs plan to use cloud computing in the next year, according to a survey by IT industry non-profit trade association CompTIA.

400 IT and business professionals in UK were surveyed. 18% of companies were currently using cloud, 93% are satisfied with the result. Other technologies with the highest planned adoption rates were mobile solutions (27 per cent) and social media (26 per cent).

Swiss software solutions company Avaloq is to recruit at least 75 Scottish graduates among the 500 new jobs to be created when it opens its new Edinburgh base.

The announcement was welcomed today by Alex Salmond, who met with senior representatives of the company as plans were officially unveiled for their new Scottish software development centre. The First Minister described the graduate jobs boost as good news for new graduates in Edinburgh and across Scotland.

The development centre – to be sited in Edinburgh city centre – is expected to employ 500 people in its first five years, with 20 staff to start before the end of this year alone.

First Minister Alex Salmond said: “I welcome Avaloq’s commitment to recruit 75 new graduates from Scottish universities which is terrific news for new graduates in Edinburgh and across Scotland. This is a substantial number of training positions being created by a well-respected international software company, whose solutions are used by dozens of banks in more than 20 countries worldwide.

“The plans they are announcing this morning for their Edinburgh software development centre will mean a total of 500 high-quality, highly-skilled new jobs. Private sector job creation is pivotal to Scotland’s economic growth and the most recent figures show employment increased in Scotland by 23,000 over the three months to July 2011, at a time when it fell by 69,000 across the UK as a whole."

British firms risk losing out on significant employee productivity gains due to old-fashioned attitudes towards embracing new technologies, from iPhones and iPads to Android smart phones and tablets, in the workplace. This is the conclusion of a survey commissioned by Six Degrees Group, a UK managed data service provider serving Britain’s mid-sized businesses.

The survey, conducted by research firm Vanson Bourne, found widely differing attitudes between businesses and their employees towards the growing ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) to work phenomenon. 200 businesses and 200 employees across the UK were surveyed.

The vast majority (78%) of employees believe that their own personal devices are superior to those provided by their employer. If they were able to use their own devices for work, employees estimate they would be at least seven percent more productive, and in many cases far higher.

The survey also found that most (84 percent) employees believe using their own device at work would place no extra burden on IT support, with almost a third more likely to troubleshoot problems themselves. Together, these findings suggest a compelling case for BYOD in the workplace.

Alastair Mills, CEO of Six Degrees Group, believes that the latest BYOD findings should have been great news for UK business. He said: “We’ve clearly reached a tipping point in technology: for the first time ever, our personal tech is better than our work tech. The trend towards BYOD reflects the fact that the UK has become one of the most connected, always on, societies and we now have technology at our fingertips that can make us even more successful.”

The Open Group recently published a new book, Cloud Computing for Business: The Open Group Guide to address cloud issues through specific guidance on business drivers for Cloud; defining the Cloud vision and buying requirements criteria; assessing risk; and building the return on investment metrics and case for Cloud Computing. The book gives managers reliable and independent guidance that will help to support decisions and actions in this key operational area.

Cloud Computing is more than just a utility cost reduction exercise of your IT storage and computing assets through subscribing or purchasing to an on-demand, pay-as-you-go model. Cloud Computing is evolving into an ecosystem of services from storage, computing and network infrastructure to impacting the integration and application software to transform the business processes and market service models.

Verne Global, an innovative, UK-based developer of power conscious data centre campuses, today announced the availability of its colocation service from its 18-hectacre campus in Keflavik, Iceland. Verne Global's data centre campus is 100% carbon neutral, drawing commercial power from Iceland's dual-sourced renewable energy power grid and utilising Iceland's ambient temperatures to provide free cooling.

Datapipe, a leading provider of managed services and infrastructure for mission critical IT and cloud computing, will be one of the first customers to have a presence in the new data centre.

"The demand for high capacity, flexible and scalable data centre campuses has increased in parallel with the growing concern of rising cost and environmental impact of traditional data centres," said Jeff Monroe, CEO of Verne Global. "We have designed a flexible, dynamic solution that answers the need for both high capacity computing and cost management."

Guernsey States could outsource more says expert

More services provided by the States of Guernsey could be run by the private sector, a specialist in infrastructure investment has said.

Giles Frost was invited from the UK by Guernsey Institute of Directors to be a guest speaker.

He told 500 island business leaders more could be done to reduce the pressure on public finances.

"I'm talking about social services, health services, leisure services." Mr Frost said.

Severn Trent Water has appointed bpi. to develop a digital strategy that will provide a foundation for their customer focused online activities over the next three years.

Severn Trent Water’s main objective was to ensure that their online activity was in parallel with their key business imperatives and that their customers were placed at the centre of everything they produce from emails to social media.

Being one of six key agencies asked to pitch, bpi. impressed the panel with their user centred design approach (UCD) and understanding of the challenges faced by the business which has in the region of 75000 customers.

James Edwards, CEO and founder of bpi, said “We are excited about working with Severn Trent Water. We believe our collaborative approach to this strategy will enable us to understand the business needs and match them more closely with the needs of their customers.

We love to find out what makes consumers tick. This project presents a wonderful opportunity for us to delve into the behavior of a typical household customer and find out how digital can change the relationship they have with their services supplier”.

The global economic downturn continues to dominate the headlines, and the doom and gloom reported by the media seems to be getting doomier and gloomier by the day.

However, there are still investors out there who refuse to be scared off by this media scaremongering and who understand the basics of investment. This equates to opportunities for financial services providers and the outsourcers and technology providers which support them.

Forward-looking investors that were burned by equity income funds, absolute return funds, and products linked with exposure to financial stocks during the recession are still willing to consider corporate bonds and certain structured products, for example. For these investors, it’s simply a question of deciding on the term of the investment, what returns they hope to achieve, and then choosing the best product. For financial services providers, effective product strategies and clear, compelling marketing are going to be key to retaining and expanding market share.

Most of today’s investors understand that it’s never a good idea to put all of their assets and risk in a single asset class or investment, and so many people are now opting for low-cost funds that are adequately diversified in order to help reduce their risk. For example, it has become popular to diversify the risks within bond investments by creating a portfolio of several bonds, each with different characteristics.

Although the spectre of inflation – along with the potential for a rise in interest rates at some stage – normally spells bad news for the bond market, these factors have actually been priced into the market already, thereby making the bond market an attractive choice during challenging economic times. Even so, the nerves of many investors have been jangled in recent years, which means that the marketing of any financial product has to be carefully planned and executed in order to attract new customers and avoid costly mistakes.

For example, it’s now more important than ever for firms to establish their brand and reputation in the marketplace very clearly. Success in this area will rely on careful and strategic planning, since the products on offer, how they are marketed, administered and supported will all come into play here, whether the firm decides to focus on a niche segment of the market or a broader customer base. Outsourcing to a specialist with deep domain experience of this process can prove a cost-effective route to market.

It will also be important to develop a unique value proposition that will help firms to stand out from the competition. Although most investors claim to focus exclusively on the returns on offer, firms will need to use a certain amount of psychology here as well, since investors will be looking for products that appear to be safe, fair and reasonable, especially as many people have found out the hard way that products that claim to offer ‘guaranteed returns’ are not always what they seem.

Financial institutions will therefore need to make sure that they are aware of current market trends, and that they are able to keep their clients informed about their latest services and/or products effectively, since that is still the best way to encourage clients to purchase them. Even so, extensive market research, a thorough competitor analysis, and close ties with knowledgeable partners will still be be required to attract – and retain – today’s more financially conservative customers

Department of Justice has announced that Oracle has agreed to pay the General Services Administration $199.5 million to settle allegations the firm failed to honor the price-reduction clause of its contract with the government.

Oracle senior director Deborah Hellinger said: "Oracle has settled a qui tam case with the General Services Administration relating to a contract that dates back 13 years ago to 1998. Oracle vigorously denies that it did not scrupulously adhere to the pricing requirements of that contract. The company has always had strong controls in place to insure that the government agencies who purchased from the GSA schedule received fair pricing.

"Oracle never committed any fraud whatsoever. Given that the events surrounding this case took place so long ago, not surprisingly many of the witnesses are no longer available or do not clearly recall these events. Oracle has therefore decided to avoid the distraction and high cost of litigating this case by settling. We remain committed to the highest principles of integrity in our relationships with Government customers."

Mouchel was locked in talks to avoid breaching a banking covenant following a £4.3m accounting blunder that led to a profits warning and the hasty departure of Richard Cuthbert, its chief executive.

The outsourcer has overestimated the profits from one contract by £4.3m because of an actuarial error on pensions liabilities inherited from a local authority contract. Sources close to the company said it was considering legal action against the actuaries.