Industry news

Savvis has announced its cloud partnership agreement with Virgin Media Business.

Through the agreement, Virgin Media Business will use Savvis Symphony Virtual Private Data Centre (VPDC), an enterprise-class cloud computing solution. Combined with Virgin Media Business' nationwide fibre-optic network and philosophy of giving clients simple advice and superior support in the way that works best for them, the service will enable U.K. organisations to free themselves of traditional IT infrastructure constraints.

"We are truly delighted that Virgin Media Business chose Savvis' enterprise-class solutions for its client base," said Neil Cresswell, EMEA managing director at Savvis, a global provider of cloud infrastructure, hosted IT solutions and colocation. "We are excited to extend our reach to new markets with Virgin Media Business. Our joint success will hopefully allow Savvis to establish similar long-term partnerships in Europe."

The agreement is part of the cloud-focused global Savvis Alliances Programme.

Google has signed a lease for a seven-floor building in East London, the first step in its commitment to support the Tech City start-up community.

Google plans to open up the space to other organisations that support technology entrepreneurs, working together to provide a launchpad for new London-based start-ups and developers. This is the first initiative of its kind for Google anywhere in the world.

Securing a lease is the first stage in making Google’s commitment to Tech City a reality. The building, at 4-5 Bonhill Street, London EC2A 4BX, will now undergo a full refurbishment before being ready to open in 2012.

In addition to providing space for other organisations that work with start-ups, the building will host a range of activities, such as speaker series, hackathons, training workshops and product demonstrations for engineers who could benefit from Google’s knowledge of building large scale online services.

This is an entirely new initiative, and Google UK’s existing operations will remain in their current offices in central London.

The lease runs until at least 2022.

David Singleton, Engineering Director, Google UK said:

“We announced our involvement in the Tech City project last year, and we’ve been working hard to make this vision a reality. Finding a suitable building is the first major step, and we hope to announce more details about the organisations we’ll work with and how they will use the space in the coming months. East London is already home to hundreds of innovative British start-ups, and has huge potential for economic growth and new jobs over the coming years.”

Eric Van Der Kleij, CEO of the Tech City Investment Organisation, said:

“Google is a terrific example of a major technology business that understands the importance of nurturing as well as benefiting from the communities where they operate. This investment will pay dividends for them as well as contributing to the long-term success of the Tech City, and we are delighted to welcome them to the area.”

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is anticipating the faster deployment of new IT systems, major gains in productivity and significant cost savings with the award of a seven-year IT contract to Capgemini UK plc. The DWP is committed to effecting one of the biggest transformations ever undertaken in Britain’s welfare and benefits regime while simultaneously meeting stringent budget targets, and the Capgemini contract will have a key role in achieving both objectives.

Capgemini UK employs some 8,000 people at 17 sites across Britain and is part of the Capgemini Group, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services.

Bev D’Alessio, Vice President of Welfare Sector at Capgemini UK, said: “We are naturally delighted with this significant expansion of our successful relationship with the DWP, and look forward to demonstrating once again why we are the IT partner of choice for organisations seeking radical transformation carried out rapidly and effectively.”

The National Outsourcing Association are delighted to announce several new sponsors of the NOA Summit & Awards; ITIDA, KPMG, PromoMadrid and Value Shore.

On 9th & 10th November 2011, the outsourcing industry will come together to share knowledge and experiences, and celebrate best practice. The two-day event will take place at the Riverbank Park Plaza, in Central London.

Now in its 8th year, the revered National Outsourcing Association Awards (NOAAs) 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 Summit features conference sessions, roundtables and exhibitions, and culminates in the much-coveted NOA Awards, which recognise the efforts of companies and individuals demonstrating world-class outsourcing best practice.

The report, entitled Preparing the Ground: Stimulating Growth in the Digital Economy, states that although the coalition is right to explore the benefits of cloud computing, ministers must do much more to address issues around cloud security and data protection.

Cloud is riddled with risk "We recommend that as a matter of urgency, the government consider the security issues involved with cloud computing, particularly regarding data location and segregation" it says.

"Cloud computing is an area where, if left unchecked, there is serious potential for abuse – for example, large corporations taking control of enormous quantities of public or private data outside the reach of national law."

The UK was placed fifth by the Business Software Alliance in its Global IT Industry Competitiveness Index 2011

First published in 2007, the IT Industry Competitiveness Index consists of 26 indicators grouped into six categories.

The report states that Europe still looks attractive in terms of IT infrastructure and the legal environment, among other factors. But the continent is arguably failing to keep pace with other regions when it comes to human capital, while rigid labor-market regulations and a poor climate for investment in next-generation broadband networks could stymie the development of the IT sector in the future.

BAE Systems has announced nearly 3,000 potential job losses within its Military Air & Information (MAI) and Shared Services businesses and at its Head Office. This announcement is in response to changes in key programmes and the need to maintain competitiveness through offering affordable products and services to customers.

Ian King, Chief Executive, BAE Systems commented: “Our customers are facing huge pressures on their defence budgets and affordability has become an increasing priority. Our business needs to rise to this challenge to maintain its competitiveness and ensure its long term future.

“Some of our major programmes have seen significant changes. The four partner nations in the Typhoon programme have agreed to slow production rates to help ease their budget pressures. Whilst this will help extend our production schedule and ensure the production line stays open until we receive anticipated export contracts, it does reduce the workload at a number of our sites."

arvato is set to expand its UK supply chain business following a multimillion pound contract with the UK regional organisation of the Bosch Group, a leading global supplier of technology and services.

The five year agreement, worth in excess of £10 million, will see the business process outsourcing partner take over the warehousing and distribution of the lawn and garden product division of Bosch Power Tools in the UK, with the transition starting 1st October 2011.

“There is a positive cultural fit between arvato and Bosch. Both companies have a customer-oriented business philosophy, an ownership structure that enables long-term, sustainable planning and an entrepreneurial spirit that drives innovation and improvement,” said Nick Wilson, Logistics Director for Bosch in the UK. “arvato’s approach has been collaborative and professional since we started discussions and we are looking forward to creating a long-term and successful partnership together.”

“Bosch has a reputation for innovation and quality, and our job is to maintain or improve this standing by providing an excellent service to Bosch’s retail customers. We see Bosch’s customers as our own,” said Markus Schmücker, Managing Director, Supply Chain Solutions, arvato UK & Ireland. “This new partnership is a critical part of our growth strategy in the UK as we expand our capacity and offering to new industry sectors.”

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the governing body of football in Europe, has selected Interoute’s pan-European cloud services to support all its business, football competitions and events over the next three seasons. Interoute will host all applications and systems used directly by UEFA including its Football Administration and Management Environment (FAME) and the UEFA.com website.

UEFA’s Football Administration and Management Environment is its core IT platform running the services essential to UEFA, such as media bookings, accreditations, competition management, as well as services for referees and commercial partners. This is a unique application crafted for the specific needs of a sport’s governing body and is crucial for its operations during matches. At the same time UEFA also requires a platform that caters for huge numbers of visitors viewing videos and images on UEFA.com. UEFA’s competitions place substantial demands on UEFA’s online platform where over 400 million users are expected to visit the UEFA.com website are expected during its international competitions' season compared to some 270 million visits when the last EURO final tournament season was held in 2008.

Daniel Marion, Head of Information and Communications Technology at UEFA, said: “Interoute has successfully designed, built and deployed a platform that delivers both enterprise grade stability and reliability as well as event-driven scalability. UEFA.com is one of the top ten most visited sites in the world during major football events providing high quality match coverage to football fans around the world. In Interoute we have found a partner who can match the high levels of performance and quality that UEFA and its competitions stand for.”

OK, first things first: cloud is definitely here to stay! Almost every CIO (98 per cent) questioned by Xantus for our latest research report had already investigated cloud services for their organisations; almost a quarter are now using them, with a further third planning to join them within the next six months, rising to 73 per cent within the next two years.

That equates to a pretty hefty budget spend on cloud computing, with anything up to 40 per cent or more of IT budgets already paying for cloud-based activities. There is an expectation of Return on Investment; two thirds felt that an ROI of 10 -20 per cent was realistic.

So, it’s clear that everyone has big expectations of cloud and most can see a compelling proposition in the long term. However, there remains a significant challenge in seeking clarity from vendors as to what they are actually selling. Almost all CIOs (86 per cent) felt that vendors are using the term ‘Cloud’ generically to sell products and services without being specific about what it means, and almost half appealed for greater differentiation in products.

Equally, while many public cloud vendors are offering a consumerised model – the key questions are - how big will the take up be? Have they got supply and demand right? Who’s going to grab market share? One view holds that too much tin is going into data centres and the whole global cloud IT estate is going to look a lot like 3G did immediately after the bandwidth auction. If that’s the case, then pricing will be very aggressive as vendors seek users for their newly-built mega datacentres.

A flexible friend?

Although agility, flexibility, business continuity and data recovery were all cited as key benefits of migrating to cloud services, the apparent ease of accessibility to generic, non-business-critical applications in The Cloud may be a double-edged sword. In Xantus’ experience, a number of firms see cloud as a very disruptive technology that IT has to react to.

Business users, familiar with Facebook and LinkedIn at home, struggle to understand the inability to have the same functionality in the office. If IT doesn’t react fast enough, other business areas are already voting with their credit cards and using cloud services for projects and specific business requirements.

Dark clouds

While the cloud computing revolution is underway, a number of practical hurdles need to be overcome before CIOs, their organisations and Boards, commit wholesale to cloud solutions. The single largest internal block to implementation appears to be integration with existing IT estates. Closely linked to this is the complexity of the task, while almost one third of CIOs remain concerned about losing control of business applications or preference over their own assets.

Surprisingly, security – often cited in the past as a serious stumbling block to cloud IT – only ranked equal fifth amongst respondents in terms of implementation. However, once ‘in the cloud’, compliance and audit (which includes security) becomes the most significant obstacle to cloud management for more than half of all CIOs.

Despite the budget CIOs already claim to be spending, it is still taking longer to convince the private sector that cloud gain is worth implementation and management pain. Several CIOs of major corporates stated they knew the benefits were out there, and it was probably only a matter of time before they entered The Cloud, but they still needed to be shown a clear value proposition or specific service to seal the deal.

Silver linings

On balance, there is plenty of work still to be done to capitalise on the cloud’s business potential. There is a school of thought, to which I subscribe, that the term ‘cloud’ may fairly quickly disappear, becoming just another mainstream IT solution approach in the same way that ‘e-business’ has just become ‘business’

However, a lot of clients are struggling with the technical and financial costs of integrating cloud into their existing IT estate, evidenced by the low level of potential partners. Vendors that solve this issue will win accounts quickly and establish some serious market share in cloud.