Industry news

Agilisys, one of the UK’s most innovative IT and business services providers, has annouced the company had been named preferred bidder by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham to provide a range of business start-up services as well as operational management of the new Barking Enterprise Centre due to open on time and on budget to the public in November of this year.

Agilisys will be responsible for all aspects of managing the centre, including facilities management of the 16,000 sq ft, 48-unit centre, marketing, and – most important – providing a number of services to help stimulate and support entrepreneurial growth in the Borough. Services aimed at supporting a high-growth, entrepreneurial culture will include business-support workshops, networking events, franchising advice, and one-to-one counselling sessions with experts in business coaching.

The services will be provided through Elevate East London, the innovative joint venture formed last year between Barking and Dagenham Council and Agilisys, which has fostering opportunity throughout the borough as one of its key objectives.

Oracle has accused Hewlett-Packard of fraud as the troubled relationship between the two technology titans plumbs new lows.

In court documents filed in California yesterday, Oracle claimed that HP concealed key facts during partnership negotiations, including that it was planning to hire Léo Apotheker, the former boss of SAP, the German IT giant.

Lambeth council has launched a procurement for a framework to support a shared service operation of an Oracle e-Business Suite for itself and several other London boroughs.

It is part of Programme Athena, under which a group of councils in the capital are moving towards common processes and procedures for HR, financials and procurement using a shared enterprise resource planning system.

The main purpose of the procurement is to contract an integrator to support the transition to a shared R12 version of the Oracle e-Business suite when support for the R11 version ends in November 2013.

Cisco has announced that it has acquired privately-held Versly. Based in San Francisco, Versly integrates collaboration capabilities via a plug-in into Microsoft Office applications, simplifying the way people work by enabling more effective collaboration around content in documents, spreadsheets, presentations and email.

"Collaboration is a top priority at Cisco. With this acquisition we're enhancing our collaboration offerings and improving the user experience by integrating social technologies within the business applications individuals and teams use at work," said Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager, Collaboration Software Group (CSG), Cisco.

"Furthermore, the integration with Versly will drive productivity improvements for organizations and their knowledge workers, many of whom are among the 600 million Microsoft Office users."

Dell and VMware have jointly announced the availability of the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud® Datacenter Services designed to provide a seamless multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems. Dell is one of the first providers authorized to provide VMware vCloud Datacenter Services for enterprise-class, secure, public, private and hybrid clouds.

Theannouncement is the first public and hybrid cloud offering by Dell and supports Dell’s strategy to provide customers next-generation computing solutions composed of hardware, software and services. Dell will also offer consulting, application and infrastructure services to help companies transform their legacy IT environment and integrate these cloud services effectively in their business.

Dell and VMware will provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) choice for customer organizations, hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers. The offer provides automation, multi-level security and availability in order to manage on-demand capacity, workload scalability, or as a platform to respond to changing business needs more rapidly.

Dell and VMware have jointly announced the availability of the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud® Datacenter Services designed to provide a seamless multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems. Dell is one of the first providers authorized to provide VMware vCloud Datacenter Services for enterprise-class, secure, public, private and hybrid clouds.

Theannouncement is the first public and hybrid cloud offering by Dell and supports Dell’s strategy to provide customers next-generation computing solutions composed of hardware, software and services. Dell will also offer consulting, application and infrastructure services to help companies transform their legacy IT environment and integrate these cloud services effectively in their business.

Dell and VMware will provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) choice for customer organizations, hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers. The offer provides automation, multi-level security and availability in order to manage on-demand capacity, workload scalability, or as a platform to respond to changing business needs more rapidly.

British supermarket giant Tesco has announced a 45 million US dollars (£27.4 million) deal with a US firm to manage its IT network.

New York-state based firm CA Technologies will monitor the IT network for Tesco Group, including Tesco Bank, Tesco.com and Tesco Mobile.

The company will deal with a wide range of IT work from health and performance of its supply chain, including desktop computers, servers, networks, credit card transactions, suppliers and supply orders.

CA Technologies has 472,000 staff working in more than 5,000 stores across 14 countries.

Mike McNamara, Tesco's chief information officer, said: "Our systems infrastructure needs to work for our IT team in order to do their job for our customers, our colleagues and our suppliers."

Courion Corporation, the leading provider of Access Risk Management solutions that help organizations cost effectively deal with identity and access compliance and security risk, has announced that London Fire Brigade, the UK's largest fire service and one of the world's largest metropolitan services, has implemented its Access Assurance Suite™ solution to automate password management and enforce consistent password policy for its 7,000 full-time firefighters and support staff.

Using Courion, London Fire Brigade has slashed the volume of calls to its IT Service Desk at shift changes, significantly reducing the overhead costs of password resets.

"To provide round-the-clock service, we operate a two-shift, four-watch system at stations. Firefighters that don't access their accounts on a daily basis often forget their passwords, which historically caused a huge volume of calls being logged with the service desk at each change of watch," said Sally Devine, head of ICT contracts and support services at London Fire Brigade. "This placed unnecessary pressures on the service desk team, making it increasingly difficult for them to achieve the required SLAs in relation to other ICT services."

HCL Technologies Ltd., a leading global IT services provider has announced its strategic partnership with Basware, a leading provider of purchase-to-pay solutions. HCL will leverage Basware’s industry leading Invoice Automation, Travel & Expense, Procurement and Connectivity solutions to deliver customers with process enhancements and increased cost reductions.

With the Basware P2P model, HCL will help customers align their procurement and finance organizations as well as ensure effective networking of P2P processes with the supply base.

“Customers are fast realizing that automating their purchase-to-pay process is an important way to drive significant cost reductions and improve productivity. Our partnership with Basware completes HCL’s F&A BPO strategy to provide end-to-end finance & accounting services across the purchase-to-pay (P2P) landscape. This partnership with Basware powers HCL’s P2P services by providing customers with a strong technology platform, and the ease to shift to e-invoicing while benefiting from process efficiencies and cost reductions,” said Randy Mueller, Vice President – Finance & Accounting, Business Services, HCL Technologies Ltd.

“We are pleased to be working with HCL to help their customers reap the benefits that purchase-to-pay automation delivers, such as cost savings, greater productivity and streamlined processes,” said Ari Salonen, Basware General Manager, North America. “Most importantly, these companies will gain critical visibility and control over their entire company-wide spend.”

2011 Outsourcing Review - So Far..

There is no doubt that 2011 has been an eventful year for outsourcing so far.

We’ve seen economic and budgetary pressures creating a buyer’s market, while the ongoing recession and public sector cuts have meant that outsourcing suppliers are expected to provide even more for less and many mega contracts have been replaced by more transparent, flexible and short-term collaborations.

Cost will undoubtedly remain a key driver for outsourcing, but 2011 has brought a shift in attitude – now it’s more about cost efficiencies and change for the long term, rather than a short-term cutting exercise. Clients want to partner with outsourcing companies to transform their businesses for the better – to deliver greater efficiency, improve flexibility, increase quality of service to their customers, and help them stay ahead of the competition through innovative solutions.

According to the 2011 Q2 TPI Index, growth in ITO and BPO contracting activity continued in the first half of the year while Americas’ resurgence continued to seem unlikely in 2H11.

Roger Newman, Senior Vice President, Mahindra Satyam, commented: “So far this year we have had cause for a cautious optimism towards our business. There is a fair amount of activity in the marketplace and some large deals have taken place, but the majority of deals we are bidding on are projects or transformational programmes rather than full outsourcing deals. This activity is evident across most of the major industry verticals. Uncertainty about the economic situation often means that companies are unwilling to expand their own headcount and this pushes businesses to outsource companies such as ourselves.

“Looking inwardly, we believe that the growth levers for IT and ITeS companies today are predominantly hovering around growth, differentiation and capabilities. This is a continuous cycle that determines strength in the market and the mind, and our strategy is aligned to these three aspects. Growth means better account mining, getting new logos and striking strategic alliances and investments into niche players.”

The outsourcing industry, and IT as a whole, has been strongly focussed on the cloud and the potential for flexible, cost effective computing. It was the most important topic at the start of 2011 and half a year has done nothing to change that. Providers and end users can no longer ignore its possibilities – understanding the cloud and how it can revolutionise the industry is both exciting and challenging.

David Ebsworth, CTO of Oncore IT, said: “With discussion on the cloud so prevalent, it’s no surprise that we’ve seen more multi-tenanted solutions coming to the market as the year’s gone on. Virtualisation and consolidation continues to drive the desire to relocate not just secondary and disaster recovery systems, but increasingly critical IT to the cloud. Overcoming the associated technology issues needs careful evaluation of any existing infrastructure and realistic expectations of what an end user requires.

“Finally is data. There’s no doubt that the volume being outsourced will increase as businesses move to protect their mission critical resources. All the while, companies will expect a simultaneous cost reduction. Attempts for an effective balance will continue as payment models are experimented with.”

A collaborative and flexible approach has become far more relevant in the 2011 economic landscape where growth is slow and the need for more creative approaches to driving efficiencies and improving service quality has become the key.

Rainer Majcen, Managing Director, Public Sector, arvato UK & Ireland said: “New thinking and innovative solutions will be vital to the future of public sector organisations. As a result, alternative service delivery models, such as co-operation with other local or regional public sector bodies, or service delivery vehicles like employee ownership or social enterprises are currently being considered.

“Ultimately, addressing the individual needs of a locality and focusing on creating a flexible and adaptable partnership will ensure that relationships prosper; adding value to all organisations in the community and delivering much needed cost savings for the public sector, whilst not compromising on the breadth and quality of the service offering. arvato’s relationship with Chesterfield Borough Council and the potential £4 million savings is a good example of the strength of this type of partnership.”

Consumers are also becoming more demanding in their search for immediate answers to complex enquiries. As a result, they are looking to an increasing number of channels for solutions. The key challenge to contact centres is to be able to effectively manage data from multiple channels. This requires solutions that have both the intelligence and flexibility to adapt to changing market and consumer needs.

Mark Brown, Managing Director, Contact Centres & Loyalty, arvato UK, commented: “Social media has empowered all consumers to become a broadcaster or journalist, so customer service becomes even more important and speed is of the essence; a complaint sent via Twitter that is left with no response management overnight could be spread worldwide very quickly.

“It’s important that all communications channels – whether it’s voice, email, hard copy or social media – are consolidated at the point of receipt to prevent duplication and ensure consistently high standards of handling and data capture.”

As the year draws to a close, the outsourcing industry will continue to prioritise standardisation and professionalism. Customers will increasingly ask their outsourcing providers to provide ‘more for less’ along with an increase in public sector shared services and providers offering flexible, innovative and cost effective contracts.