Industry news

Winterthur Life, a leading European insurer, has signed a contract with CSC worth over £30 million to develop a cross-business administration system.

Under the terms of the agreement, Winterthur Life intends to standardise its information technology platform for the administration of its individual and group life insurance business, enabling the company to react to the market swiftly and efficiently.

Bombardier Transportation, a global leader in transportation solutions, has signed off on an ITO contract with CSC worth over £680m.

The seven year contract marks an extension of an existing agreement that began in 2002. Under the new agreement, CSC will continue to provide Bombardier Transportation with a range of infrastructure outsourcing services including desktop, service desk, network and application management services. The deal will see CSC provide support for more than 20,000 users at sites across 33 countries around the world.

André Navarri, President of Bombardier Transportation, said: “This renewed agreement with CSC will ensure that our employees have quality IT services and support, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from anywhere in the world”.

Outgoing BT CEO Ben Verwaayen has used the platform at an international conference to lambast business for failing to "get" environmental issues, despite the fact that business has a key role (perhaps the key role) to play in sustainability.

"I think carbon is the new currency. Whether we like it or not, we will get regulation, legislation and taxation, unless we do something ourselves," Verwaayen said to a reporter at the recent INSEAD Leadership Summit 2008 on global citizenship.

India's Tata Communications has signed an equity joint venture with China Enterprise Communications Ltd to acquire a 50 percent stake in the Chinese firm for an undisclosed amount.

Amitabh Choudhary, CEO of Infosys BPO, has set a steep target of $1 billion in revenue in three years for its BPO division, a target which is four times its current revenue.

Infosys' BPO market is growing at 70 percent a year, while its IT business is growing at just 20 percent – nevertheless, still a healthy figure.

Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth MP has today launched “Defence Travel”, a new online service which enables British forces in the UK and overseas to book business travel. The service has been developed collaboratively between the Ministry of Defence (MOD), Capgemini UK plc, Hogg Robinson Group and various other suppliers.

Users of the new site will be able to book travel via air, rail, road and reserve accommodation from anywhere in the world. The service replaces a diverse portfolio of existing systems used by different units, including paper-based processes involving form-filling and the production of printed warrants. Over 300,000 Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and MOD personnel will be able to use the service, delivering expected cost savings of around £35m annually.

Sir Ian Andrews, Second Permanent Under-Secretary at the MOD, said: “We are confident that the new service will provide a better service to users and save significant sums of money, helping to ensure that as much as possible of every pound we spend is directed to the front line where it can really make an impact on achieving our objectives.”

Vendors supporting Capgemini on the Defence Travel project include Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Cognos and KDS.

IT solutions consultancy ramsac has announced that it has been appointed to provide network support for V Festival 2008 at Hylands Park. For the fifth year in succession, ramsac has been chosen by event promoters Maztec Ltd to support the backstage network that provides Internet and email access to temporary on-site offices for the production teams and performers.

The V Festival takes place on the 16th – 17th August 2008, Hylands Park in Chelmsford, Essex and Weston Park in Staffordshire and is expected to attract over 160,000 people each day. Each of the acts billed to appear over the weekend have individual production teams that require backstage access to Internet and email. Bob Angus, Director of the V Festival explains, “It is very important that the production teams of the headline and supporting acts have Internet access and as the festival promoters, we must have access to our company network to co-ordinate all event logistics.”

Throughout the two-day Hylands Park event, ramsac will provide backstage network support and will be available for consultancy, advice and on-site support, ensuring that any technical problems are dealt with immediately.

Technical Director at ramsac, Paul Mew, comments, “We have a dedicated support team on hand throughout the weekend to ensure that all technical problems are rectified as soon as possible. Some of the supporting acts only have limited time in their dressing rooms, so it is essential that they are able to access the Internet and their emails instantly.”

Bob Angus from the V Festival adds, “ramsac has provided excellent backstage IT support for the past four years and we are very happy that they have decided to accept the challenge for the fifth year running.”

The security division of value-added distributor Bell Micro today announced findings from a new independent research report which suggests that UK businesses are still failing to address the protection of data assets on the network from staff abuse, misuse or direct theft.

Nearly half (47%) of the respondents questioned at InfoSecurity Europe 2008 believed their companies were yet to implement real-time systems that would inform IT departments if security levels were breached.

This latest research follows similar reports in recent weeks suggesting that more than one third of IT directors say that their organisations have suffered either data loss or data theft internally – not to mention, of course, the latest in a spate of public sector security lapses, from confidential documents being left on commuter trains to laptop thefts from the Home Office and Ministry of Defence.

Most respondents in IT based roles (74%) recognise, and work to protect, against the danger of rogue connections such as customer or contractor laptops, and yet almost half (43%) were failing to enforce a policy of encrypting data on portable devices - such as personal laptops, PDAs and removable media. Worse still, 62% of respondents indicated that IT departments would be unable to detect if an employee copied data off a server onto a PC, laptop, USB stick or a disk.

This is further clear evidence of the unexpected knock-on effects of increased mobility and teleworking: consumer devices, together with business laptops, Blackberrys, mobiles and PDAs are increasingly falling into a grey area of unsupported devices, or computers that serve functions both in the office, at home, and on the journey in between.

This is the logical extension of the famous incident of the IT CEO who left his laptop unattended while speaking at a security conference – when it went missing, he realised that he had essentially allowed the entire company to be stolen by a passing stranger.

Despite the latest report, It's clear that policy, governance and good management are the only viable solutions here, rather than more technology. However, the problem for CIOs, especially those dealing with networks of outsourcing partners, is balancing the increased productivity and flexibility offered by teleworking, homeshoring and homeworking (which some studies put as high as 20-25%) with the increased security risk and potential for data or equipment loss and theft.

“What these findings show is that there is still a paramount need to increase attention to data management and protection in an organisation,” said Steve Browell, general manager of the Security Division at Bell Micro. “How data is encrypted, moved and stored must move up the business agenda, otherwise we are just leaving the gates wide open for the horse to bolt. The tools are already available but vendors, distributors and resellers alike must come together to deliver better education to customers and create a total service that can deliver true data loss prevention.”

While security remains a key investment for UK businesses, this latest research suggests that critical network security services are either yet to be broadly adopted or have been purchased but incorrectly implemented.

Sterling continued to struggle against the dollar and euro on Wednesday after minutes from the Bank of England's last policy meeting showed a 8-to-1 vote in favour of leaving interest rates on hold. (Reuters)

Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking that the construction industry is not doing too badly. The London Olympics, the Government’s housing scheme and infrastructure development such as CrossRail have had huge news coverage and paint a fairly rosy picture of the industry.

However, dig a little deeper and you find that the London Olympics is facing a shortage of over 180,000 skilled construction and building workers, let alone the spiralling costs and deadline extensions. The Government’s housing targets look likely to be missed and industry bodies are making worrying noises about a decreasing number of graduates coming through the system.

Furthermore, the construction industry is always vulnerable to take the initial impact from an economic downturn. Looking back at the dips during the 80s and 90s this certainly rings true. The recent credit crunch has therefore put even greater pressure on an industry which has been dealing with pressures on capacity.

Evidence of the effects of the crunch is now being covered on an almost daily basis in the media. One of Britain’s biggest building firms, Persimmon Homes, based in York, recently confirmed that it was to stop certain construction projects. The effect of the economy on new house sales was given as the reason for this decision. Just over the Pennines, Liverpool Football Club has postponed its new stadium project as owner Tom Hicks stated that the current economic situation was "the most difficult... I've seen in the last 20 years.”

The issue for the construction industry is that past experience has shown us that it usually suffers first in a slump. This inevitably dominos onto other sectors. Business investment could well be the next domino to fall which would have substantial repercussions on construction forecasts. In such uncertain times it is absolutely vital that firms plan for the long term so they are as prepared as possible to weather the storm.

With choppy waters ahead, all companies have to look at their available resources to make sure that they can be flexible and adaptable to keep their head above water. This means that firms will have to run a tight ship and manage their resources incredibly efficiently.

In a recent white paper conducted by the MCA (the Management Consultancies Association) it was reported that over 66 per cent of companies surveyed felt that resource management was the most important or second most important process in the company. However 55 per cent of businesses were only able to plan their resources for three months at a time- and the presence of a dedicated resource planning IT system was worryingly absent.

The importance of having a resource planning system can not be understated. It can provide substantial savings on infrastructure overheads, as well as improving management efficiencies dramatically - essentially it enables a company to align its processes better so that it operates more efficiently.

Admittedly, it can sometimes be a fairly daunting task for staff - but it will make the overall running of the business much easier if you need to restructure or plan for increases, or decreases in capacity and demand.

In order to get the benefits as quickly as possible you need to keep things simple, yes this is an IT system that will change the processes of your business, but it must not stop people from talking. Project managers will see the benefit of having a comprehensive capacity report for current and future projects so that they have a better foundation from which to make important decisions.

Project managers can maximise the resources they have at their disposal, reducing the risk of project overruns and lost time due to poor staffing deployment. Planning and organising the resources available means any project can meet the agreed targets successfully.

Every business must look to the future - there is conflicting opinions on the scale of the impact of the crunch, but in such uncertain times no one can afford to gamble. What is vital for businesses to consider is that the investment sector is vulnerable and this could dramatically change the landscape. With a planning system in place a firm is in a much better position to navigate the forthcoming peaks and troughs successfully.