Industry news

The UK IT outsourcing (ITO) market continues to present opportunities for large providers at the top end of the market, according to new research from global advisory and consulting firm Ovum. However smaller and niche suppliers are facing the toughest of conditions as opportunities fall into the hands of the largest players.

The new report titled, “UK IT outsourcing: opportunities in a recession”, shows that the ten biggest UK ITO providers have boosted their total contract value (TCV) of ITO deals signed in the first six months of the year by an impressive 31 percent. This is due to a combination of some new megadeals entering the market (BT’s £500m contract at the National Health Service, IBM and CSC’s £300m deals at the Government’s Identity and Passport Service, and a £685m deal for HP-EDS at insurance giant Aviva) as well as many smaller sized deals that are increasingly encompassing a broader range of services.

John O’Brien, senior analyst and author of the report says: “The UK public sector in particular continues to let significant contracts such as for ID cards, with others such as the Environment Agency still to come. However this is more a culmination of existing procurements than new initiatives.”

Other vertical sectors such as financial services, pharmaceuticals/life sciences, retail and travel are showing active interest in ITO too. They are also under heavy financial pressure as a result of the recession. Recent £20m+ ITO deals with IBM at the Carphone Warehouse, CSC at Virgin Atlantic, and with Xerox at nationalised bank Northern Rock, are encouraging signs of such activity coming to market.

O’Brien continues: “The UK ITO market has some residual opportunities that are reaching sign-off in 2009 – hence the continued buoyant demand in the first half of the year. But beyond that demand is holding up well as outsourcing becomes a top priority for many end users grappling with the impact of recession.”

While this is all good news for the top tier, the second and third tier players are struggling. Amid an increasingly consolidating supplier landscape (HP/EDS, Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens) the available deals are falling into the hands of fewer and fewer players, which have immense spending power and reach.

To succeed in the current market, suppliers are going to need to have deep pockets and resilience. Offering more for less by restructuring contracts, offering new technologies such as virtualisation and cloud computing, and providing innovative approaches to drive out further cost for their customers are key to winning and retaining business. This will require significant time and financial investment on the part of suppliers, and will be a challenge to even the most financially stable vendors. Without a clear understanding of, and a strategic response to the challenges faced, this has the potential to spell the end for the second and third tier UK ITO market.

Nectar, the United Kingdom’s leading coalition loyalty programme has extended its IT contract agreement with IT service provider, Savvis.

Under the terms of the agreement, Savvis will continue to manage the underlying IT infrastructure that supports Nectar’s core business applications, including its point redemption, data warehouse and financial systems as well as managing its private networks, security and utility-based data storage infrastructure.

Savvis will also continue to host www.nectar.com, which processes thousands of transactions per day from consumers and businesses and provides access to more than 300 online retailers such as Amazon.co.uk and eBay.

Fiachra Woodman, IT Director at Groupe Aeroplan UK, the owners of Nectar, commented, “We’ve had a very successful and close working relationship with Savvis for the past eight years. We have benefited greatly from the speed and flexibility of their Utility Computing platform.”

Contact centre outsourcers outperform in-house operations

ContactBabel's and The Outsource Junction's have teamed up to create a detailed report on the contact centre outsourcing industry.

The report has found that outsourcers have usually outperformed in-house contact centres, with average speed to answer being 26% lower, and non-talk time being 10% lower in outsourcing operations.

The report also predicts that between now and 2011, growth in the contact centre outsourcing sector will be more than double that of the in-house sector

Other areas covered by the research includes:

• Businesses' attitudes towards outsourcing

• Outsourcing vs in-house performance statistics

• Salaries, HR and technology

• Outsourcers' revenue, growth, profit margins

• Trends in pricing, procurement and OSP selection processes

• Growth drivers, sectors, types of work

• SWOT analysis of the outsourcing sector's future

• Choosing an outsource partner: what to ask

• Top 30 UK contact centre and BPO outsourcers by revenue

• Detailed views of the Top 10 UK outsourcers (financials, location, clients, service portfolio, sector expertise, M&A, etc)

• Sector Focus: The UK Public Service Industry - the fastest-growing UK BPO sector

The full report can be found here: www.contactbabel.com/outsourcing.htm

Aimed at becoming the first platinum five-star hotel in the Hangzhou city, the Dragon Hotel is determined to leapfrog its competition by offering a totally new client experience achieved through a RMB one billion (US$146 million) upgrade project. As a major part of the three-prong project, IBM will implement an information technology (IT) infrastructure system.

Dragon Hotel has been chosen as the official venue for conferences hosted by the Hangzhou Municipal Government. This, together with the challenges brought by the economic climate, has compelled Dragon Hotel to launch a large-scale upgrading project.

The project includes the upgrading of the hotel rooms and infrastructure to a luxury environment as well as training of hotel management and staff.

The fully integrated IT system, when available for service early next year, is expected to boost the hotel's efficiency and productivity and reduce the operational cost, thus helping the hotel improve its competitive advantage.

Under the agreement, IBM will integrate the hotel's major systems -- the hotel management system, the communications system and the one-stop service center -- which include the personal digital assistant (PDA) system, self check-in kiosk, interactive TV, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system, Internet telephony, cell phone system and room control system.

Prior to the implementation, IBM Global Technology Services designed a range of customised "Smart Hotel" solutions comprising IBM's RFID technology, Site and Facilities service and Integrated Communications services.

"In the hotel industry, technology can make a real difference by significantly enhancing the customer experience and maximise their comfort and satisfaction," said Eric Du, General Manager, Dragon Hotel. "Through the cooperation with IBM, Dragon Hotel would be able to build a Smart Hotel system to improve significantly the operational efficiency and productivity, the response time to client demands, and most of all, the client experience."

To support Dragon Hotel's objective to continue to be Hangzhou's preferred conference hotel, IBM will implement a conference management system.

Additionally, through collaboration with China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, IBM will integrate China's six telecommunications networks into one platform, the first of its kind in the industry. Every handheld set in the guest rooms will function as a mobile phone to make local and international calls any where in the hotel.

IBM and Cisco revealed that they are teaming on a pilot to help the Dutch utility Nuon and the city of Amsterdam make smarter use of energy by enabling consumers to make more informed decisions about their energy consumption. The pilot program is part of the Amsterdam Smart City initiative, in which citizens, governments and companies are working together to make more efficient use of energy, water and mobility to create a more sustainable city.

The consortium will jointly implement an energy management system based on smart metering and home energy management technology, which will enable 500 selected households to gain better insight into their energy consumption. It is anticipated that as a result of the pilot, customers will be able to save on energy costs and realise a CO2 reduction of at least 14 percent.

Smart meters and home energy management systems will be installed in the 500 households that participate in the pilot. Within this consortium, Nuon and IBM will develop the applications for the energy management system, making use of intelligent IT systems and well-protected web technology. Cisco will be responsible for the IP-based home energy management solutions that help enable real-time, highly secure connectivity between household appliances and the energy system, resulting in substantial efficiencies.

The energy management pilot in Amsterdam has had the help of several program partners housing corporations; Far West and Ymere, Amsterdamse Innovatie Motor, Home Automation Europe, ROC Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam and Grid Operator Liander. The pilot is co-funded by the European Fund for Regional Development.

Lima, the capital of Peru, has signed an ITO deal with Affiliated Computer Services to develop and implement a contactless ticketing system for the country's first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line. The deal, signed with Protransporte, Lima’s transportation organisation authority, will see ACS operate the system for a 14-year period

"This engagement demonstrates ACS' ability to solve complex traffic and transportation issues and highlights our considerable expertise in providing efficient and effective transportation solutions to the growing traffic demands in the region," said Dave Amoriell, executive vice president and president of ACS Transportation Solutions. "Through our cashless technology solutions, ACS is making a significant difference in the lives of millions of people by making their commute more convenient, safe and efficient."

Under the terms of the contract, valued at $200 million, ACS will supply and operate a fully integrated fleet management and ticketing solution to cover the needs of the first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system installed in one of the busiest areas of Lima. The line is intended to carry over 700,000 passengers a day, and the City of Lima intends to build ten other ticketing solutions, along similar lines, in the next few years.

The ticketing solution will be based on smart contactless cards that will be controlled at each station by gates and sold by Automatic Ticket Vending Machines and manned Point of Sale terminals. The 220 buses will be fully monitored and regulated leveraging a state of the art fleet management system that will significantly minimise waiting time at each station.

The new contract marks a further expansion into the contactless ticketing area for ACS after the company secured a similar deal in the Persian Gulf in early July.

Innovation Auto Risk, an Indian leader in claims management to insurers and fleet management companies, has signed an ITO agreement with IBM. The new contract is designed to support the company’s growth and expansion plans.

Under the terms of the agreement, IBM will deploy server, storage, networking and security IT infrastructure to be hosted at a data center in Delhi. IBM will provide 24x7 onsite infrastructure monitoring services from an onsite command center. In addition, it will provide managed services and ongoing project management for infrastructure procurement, commissioning and configuration, as well as hardware refreshes after five years.

"We are delighted with our agreement with IBM and believe its technology expertise and focus on delivering cost-efficient solutions will help us achieve our growth strategy and higher levels of customer satisfaction," said Manu Mehta, Director, Innovation Auto Risk. "We maintain a stable organization built on a foundation of experience and are committed to give our customers the benefits of the highest levels of service without losing focus on our core businesses. Since we offer cost-effective solutions to insurers helping them to reduce claims cost, we ourselves have to keep our costs at check while introducing latest technologies in India to our customers, in which case IBM helped us to achieve that," he added.

The agreement was signed in the second quarter of 2009, but financial terms were not disclosed.

British American Tobacco has signed a five-year application co-sourcing contract with Accenture to help it improve the design, development and implementation of its information technology systems for its business operations.

Under the agreement, Accenture and British American Tobacco will jointly design a wide range of applications for British American Tobacco’s functions, including finance, supply chain, sales and marketing, with Accenture developing these applications for global, regional and local use. The program will help British American Tobacco transform its solution delivery function into a global, simplified and standardised operation.

Accenture will deliver the co-sourced services through a joint application development centre with British American Tobacco in Spain and through the Accenture Global Delivery Network, including the use of delivery centres in the Philippines and India.

“We believe that this co-sourced program will make us considerably more effective across our global enterprise,” said Craig Wallace, head of solution delivery at British American Tobacco. “Collaborating with Accenture on this program will greatly enhance our knowledge, skills and capabilities and enable us to more quickly reshape and transform solution delivery within our business. Accenture is arguably the leader in this field and brings world-class people, tools and assets, combined with a deep understanding of and close relationships with SAP and Siebel.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The US Department of Defence (DoD) has signed an agreement with CSC to help enhance cyber security and combat threats. The agreement is a further step in safeguarding vital defence information that is important to US defence and national security.

Under the terms of the agreement, the DoD and CSC will collaborate concerning third party attempts to attack network systems. DoD and the Defence Industrial Base (DIB) Program members will use lessons learned to improve risk management of critical network infrastructures. This is consistent with the President's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. In addition, technical practices developed within the DIB Program will improve the protection and security of information. As the agreement is implemented, the DoD and CSC will build a framework to characterise cyber threats to the defence industrial base, aiding in the development of measures to combat and mitigate these threats.

The London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG), the body behind putting together the London Olympic Games, has changed its infrastructure partner from Nortel to Cisco. According to LOCOG, the contract with Nortel has ended on good terms, following its decision in June to sell certain parts of its business.

The reason for the breakup was that that some parts of the business that were sold were integral to delivering on Nortel’s 2012 commitments.

In a statement LOCOG said, “Technology for the Games is a huge undertaking with a fixed deadline, relying on finalising the design and building of systems now. In order to deliver 'the most connected Games possible', LOCOG felt it was vital to work with a single business to cover the entire network infrastructure. As a result, LOCOG and Nortel amicably decided to bring the current agreement to an end.”

LOCOG invited Cisco to bid for the infrastructure contract which it won. The company will now immediately start working on the project.

London 2012 CEO Paul Deighton commented, “We continue on a path to deliver the most connected Games possible. We part with Nortel on good terms.

“Nortel acknowledges our fixed deadlines and our desire to have a single supplier for our entire network infrastructure have been impacted by Nortel’s decision to move towards standalone businesses. This is in no way a reflection of their capabilities – this is all about meeting our fixed deadlines.”