Industry news

The global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7bn (£24.7bn) in 2011 to more than $241bn (£146bn) in 2020, according to a report from analyst firm Forrester called Sizing the Cloud.

These figures represent both public and private sectors of the cloud-computing market.

Interestingly, the report argues that the public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service model, pioneered by the likes of Amazon with its EC2 offering, will reach a peak of $5.9bn (£3.5bn) in global revenues by 2014, then enter a period of significant commoditisation, price deterioration, and margin pressure.

As a result, between 2014 and 2020, this market will decline, and revenues will stand at an estimated

Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2045974/cloud-market-total-gbp146bn-2020-forrester#ixzz1KiDMjSZI

The NHS has spent £9.7 million on IT contract legal advice, during a two year period when it attempted to renegotiate deals on its highly-troubled national IT programme.

The figures were revealed in a written submission from the Department of Health to the Public Accounts Committee. The PAC today published a report on reforms in the NHS.

In the financial year from 2009, the NHS spent £6.3 million on “legal consultancy advice”. During the first nine months of the following year, it spent a further £3.4 million. During those periods, the Department of Health was striving to renegotiate contracts with IT suppliers.

It was previously revealed that in the seven years to March 2009, the NHS spent a further £39 million on lawyers for the programme.

One of two lead suppliers on the programme, BT, delivers IT systems to NHS trusts in London and other parts of southern England. It saw its contract value cut marginally from £1.1 billion to £1 billion last year, in exchange for delivering systems to around half as many London trusts and cutting deployments elsewhere.

Meanwhile, complex discussions are ongoing with CSC, which has a £3.2 billion contract to deliver IT systems to northern and central England. Last week, CSC was dropped by a key NHS trust which said it did not have confidence in the supplier. This followed the Department of Health issuing it with a breach of contract notice in February, following repeatedly missed deadlines.

The NHS is also reportedly in protracted legal discussions with Fujitsu, which quit the programme in 2008 after it and the NHS failed to agree on the cost of localising systems. Fujitsu had had a £709 million contract for NHS systems in southern England. Work in those areas is now carried out by BT.

The Department of Health had not commented on the details of the legal expenditure at the time of writing.

Source: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/public-sector/3276377/nhs-spends-10m-on-it-contract-legal-advice/

Several days after Amazon.com's cloud outage knocked some high-profile Web sites offline, the company said its cloud service was largely back up and running. Now Amazon is trying to track down the root of the problem.

The outage partially disabled or knocked out popular websites including Quora, Foursquare and Reddit.

On Saturday, two days after Amazon suffered a failure in its Web hosting services , the company announced that it had fixed most of the problem. However, the latest update on Amazon's Service Health Dashboard noted that engineers are still working on some remaining issues with its EBS, or Elastic Block Storage .

At 10:35 p.m. ET on Sunday, Amazon reported, "We're in the process of contacting a limited number of customers who have EBS volumes that have not yet recovered and will continue to work hard on restoring these remaining volumes.

Users still having problems with their hosted Web sites should contact Amazon on their Web Services site. Users should select Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud in the "Services" field. And in the description field, they should list the instance and volume IDs and describe the issue they're experiencing.

Source: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/cloud-computing/3276189/amazon-investigates-after-cloud-nightmare/

Utility giant Centrica is taking advantage of onshore and offshore software testing skills through an £8m deal with Software Quality Systems (SQS).

The 12-month managed software testing contract will test business critical systems such as those being used in Centrica's smart metering programme.

The deal is a signal of the increasing importance of software testing to Centrica, the parent company of British Gas. Previously the firm contracted SQS on a project-by-project basis.

Centrica will gain access to testing resources locally and offshore. SQS has software testing resources in India and South Africa.

The need to get smart metering applications right has increased Centrica's software testing requirement. The billing systems related to smart metering will be complicated because of the requirement to allow consumers to manage when they use energy and bill them accurately.

Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/04/21/246511/Centrica-outsources-software-testing.htm

Greenpeace is lashing out at some of the world's largest technology firms over their datacentre practices.

The environmental watchdog group said in its 'Dirty Data Report' [PDF] that companies running large-scale cloud services are neglecting to adopt green energy practices and policies at the datacentre facilities.

The company pointed to vendors such as Facebook, Apple and Google as making poor choices in selecting green energy sources for their datacentre.

"Across the board, IT companies have thus far failed to commit to clean energy in the same way they are embracing energy efficiency, which is holding the sector back from being truly green," Greenpeace said in the report.

By failing to consider alternative energy sources when building facilities, the group argues that many vendors are driving up their carbon footprints and further damaging the environment.

Among Greenpeace's biggest complaints was the locations in which many firms are building their datacentre facilities. In particular, the group singled out Apple, Google and Facebook for their choices of venue.

All three firms have established datacentres in North Carolina, a region that Greenpeace has labelled as the 'Dirty Data Triangle.' The group said that the area in which the datacentres are located is particularly reliant on coal for generating electricity.

Source: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2045667/greenpeace-criticise-cloud-providers-dirty-energy-practices#ixzz1KcPRXxNj

The global cloud computing market will grow from a $40.7 billion in 2011 to $241 billion in 2020, according to Forrester Research.

On the way to all of this growth are a few notable nuggets from the report.

* For starters, the infrastructure as a service market will peak at $5.9 billion in global revenue in 2014 and then commoditization, price pressure and falling margins kick in. In other words, early wins by Amazon Web Services and Rackspace won’t add up in the long run.

* Software as a service will be adopted by companies of all sizes. In 2011, SaaS will be a $21.2 billion market and grow to $92.8 billion in 2016. AT that point SaaS comes closer to saturation.

* BusinessProcess as a service will be notable, but face modest revenue.

* Virtualization will recede to the background as new technologies take over.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/cloud-computing-market-241-billion-in-2020/47702

SQS signs £8 million Managed Services contract with Centrica

SQS Software Quality Systems AG has announced that it has signed a Managed Services contract worth £8 million with Centrica plc - the UK's leading integrated energy company.

Centrica has selected SQS to provide on and offshore testing, with a focus on raising quality and reducing risk within their business critical systems such as the Smart Metering programme, which is designed to be installed in over two million homes. The contract, which commences immediately, is worth £8 million over 12 months and will involve SQS providing end-to-end testing, from performance through to automated regression test suites, in an on and offshore model.

This contract represents a continuation of existing business volumes with Centrica. However, in signing a Managed Services contract for 12 months, Centrica has made a significantly longer commitment than the previous project-based contracts, resulting in improved revenue visibility for SQS.

David Cotterell, SQS Board Director, commented: "We are delighted that Centrica has extended its commitment to SQS, demonstrating the high value it places on partnering with a pure play, independent testing provider with a proven on and offshore presence. As well as providing greater revenue visibility this contract demonstrates the success of the ongoing strategic investment into our Managed Services business."

Sabio has won a contract to implement a customer contact centre infrastructure for Eurostar.

The contact centre specialist will apply Avaya Aura SIP-based technology platform that will allow the high speed rail service operator to integrate its call centre activities in London and Ashford.

Eurostar has nine million passengers a year and receives an average 1.2 million calls per annum. It also receives 85,000 customer interactions via e-mail and letter. The solution will support its current and anticipated future call volumes, and provide the flexibility to respond to heightened customer service demands at peak times or during periods of disruption.

The solution allows Eurostar's service staff to answer calls at both its Ashford or Central London sites, with the ability to switch traffic to either location as part of the company's broader disaster recovery plan.

Richard Thomas, Eurostar's chief technology officer said: “We needed to work with a contact centre specialist with a high level of Avaya solutions expertise, and a partner that could offer the local skills required to ensure Eurostar's demanding operations are fully resilient.

"Signing a long-term support contract with Sabio should ensure that the Eurostar customer experience team can rely on a best practice contact centre infrastructure to support our service operation."

Source: Call Centre Focus: http://www.callcentre.co.uk/ccf-news-content/full/sabio-wins-eurostar-contract

American online retailer Gilt Groupe is creating up to 200 jobs - 100 of which will be call centre roles in Limerick.

A Dublin operation will focus on software development with the contact centre due to open due to open in September.

Gilt Groupe provides invitation-only access to products and experiences at ‘insider prices’. It offers its members a selection of merchandise, including clothing, accessories and lifestyle items.

Source: Call Centre Focus: http://www.callcentre.co.uk/ccf-news-content/full/online-retailer-to-create-call-centre-jobs

Energy firm Centrica has signed a managed services contract worth £8m with SQS Software Quality Systems.

The firm has selected SQS, specialists in software testing and quality managed services, to provide on- and offshore testing, with a focus on reducing risk within its core business elements.

The 12-month contract commences immediately and is worth £8m. It will see SQS providing end-to-end testing, from performance through to automated regression test suites.

Centrica also announced that it extended its contract with IT services provider Fujitsu earlier this week, with a five-year infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) deal that will see Fujitsu refresh the company's desktop infrastructure to deliver access to new email and instant messaging solutions.

According to Fujitsu, the infrastructure can be scaled to meet Centrica's requirements going forward, and will support increased use of virtual clients and mobile devices.

Fujitsu's IaaS solution will be hosted using Fujitsu servers and storage in one of Fujitsu's UK datacentres.

"As Centrica grows both organically and through acquisition, the IT capabilities and support we provide to allow them to do their jobs are critical," said David Bickerton, group CIO at Centrica.

"Therefore our desktop services, which increasingly involve adoption of mobile devices, become ever more critical to the efficient running of our business and the IT experience we provide our people."

Source:http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2045126/centrica-signs-deals-revamp#ixzz1K97O9k1n