Industry news

Thanet District Council has placed tender for an integrated payroll and HR system, which could eventually be expanded to the whole of Kent.

The contract would include the provision of support, maintenance and training services as part of an “out-of-the-box” package.

The tender notice place the value of contract at between 275,000 and £100,00 and will be owned by Thanet District Council, who will act as the hosts, with HR and payroll services being shared with Canterbury City and Dover District Councils.

London Councils look to shared service provider for increased efficiencies

Leicester Council tenders for new benefits systems

The German public sector has moved to promote the uptake of open source software and services as one of its key priorities.

The move comes as one of the key goals of the new coalition government, with open source technology being seen as a way in which security can be enhanced against built in vulnerabilities and foreign influences.

The move to using open source services coincides with the new government’ move to increase transparency, with documents including transcripts and research being placed in easily accessible open data formats.

German businesses have cautioned against damaging competition with the promotion of open sourced software, saying that a level playing field would give consumers and departments access to the best options.

UK economy ‘improving’ according to European Central Bank as German growth shrinks

Vodafone moves to acquire stake in German telecoms market

Amazon Web Services (AWS) have released there analytics public offering known as Kinesis, designed to provide customers with real-time data analytics software.

Available now in public beta, the service is able to process large amounts of data from multiple sources.

The service is an out-of-box offering, designed to appeal to AWS customers, who don’t want to be involved with managing hardware and software services.

The analytics software like AWS itself is a scalable solution, ranging in price dependent on the amount and frequency of data that is employed within Kinesis.

Amazon develops new London site

News international moves to Amazon cloud infrastructure

A government committee has heard that local authorities are failing to effectively collaborate with each other.

A committee of MPs heard that local authorities still had a way to go in order to realise savings, with the potential to save billions from savings of just one or two per cent.

The committee heard that a shortage in procurement skills inside the public sector was continuing to impact the overall efficiency of government procurement services.

Baroness Tina Stowell, parliamentary undersecretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), said: “There is a role for us in showing some leadership and reinforcing the importance of better procurement, but at the same time when we are informing councils of this we are sadly seeing examples of councils not taking advantage of the advice we are giving them.”

MPs criticise civil service

Calls for shorter public sector procurement processes

Manish Sablok, Head of Marketing, CNE Europe at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, explains how this year, IT departments need to move on from focusing solely on devices, to instead concentrate on delivering the user experience.

In business, the seemingly unstoppable Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has been a key driving force. But IT departments still tend to focus on the most visible part of this transformation: the actual device in the workplace. They now need to look at the bigger picture of this transformation, particularly on 'app-ification' – where the users expect an application for everything as well as the enabling seamless network access: wired or wireless.

Workplaces are transforming. Employees are becoming app-hungry consumers, expecting the same level of simple, effective connectivity and communication regardless of which personal device they choose to use, whether it’s a tablet, smartphone or laptop: their experience across any device must equal the same experience.

I call it the new era of the Personal Cloud. It’s all about users being able to use any device, anywhere, to access any service. Whether that's for business processes, storage, databases, emails, messaging, watching videos or sending pictures, it must be possible via any platform – CRM, SCMs and even enterprise and non-enterprise social collaboration tools such as Facebook and YouTube – the list goes on and will continue to do so. Whichever service they choose, the user expects to have the same experience delivered.

So in the future world of the new Personal Cloud (PC) era, we can expect the symptom of the device to evolve into 'BYOX' where X signifies any application or network access of your choice. Enter the new era of the Personal Cloud.

The architecture to support this delivery must be built by an Application Fluent Network strategy that is user-centric, not device-centric. And it must be able to deliver applications, data and services to any user in the most appropriate and secure fashion, understanding the device the person is employing at the time, as well as the type of application he is using, to then provide him with appropriate connectivity. In order to achieve this, the Application Fluent Network (AFN) architecture must offer three key attributes: a resilient architecture, streamlined operations and automatic control, three key capabilities that enable and shape the user experience.

The new generation of applications and services are already evolving to this new PC era. For example, our OpenTouch-based UC solutions for example, provide business users with multimedia collaborative conversations experience through simple, intuitive and contextual application through any device they choose.

So enter the new PC Era, which improves workflow and user productivity to new levels. The AFN architecture lowers operational costs, therefore providing a higher Return on Investment (ROI) and overall transformed user experience irrespective of their choice of device.

The British Red Cross has moved to tender for IT suppliers to provider framework and hardware services.

The charity has posted a prior information notice for an “upcoming tender opportunity” for hardware, including PCs, tablets and laptops across the UK.

The Red Cross has specified that multiples contractors will be involved in providing the IT framework and that only large suppliers are being sought.

The tender is for a two-year contract, with a deadline set for the 1st April 2014 for bids to be entered.

Councils receive £6.9 million in recognition of ICT transformation

Public sector software and IT services market declines

A new report by Gartner has predicted that data discovery will become a significant future trend for business intelligence (BI) vendors.

The report identified that data discovery will become the prime focus of BI vendors, ahead of report generation.

The report said that: "the majority of current IT-centric vendors will shift the focus of new product investment and platform emphasis from IT-authored production reporting, to governed, business-user-driven data discovery and analysis".

The report also identified that easy-to-use business intelligence tools would become the norm and that competition between system integrators and BI vendors would increase, as analytic applications from the two groups become increasingly similar.

Insight into IT set to be a key focus for 2014

UK graduates lack skills for big data

Intel has acquired the wireless assets of Mindspeed Technologies, which will be used to enhance the IT giant’s data centre and mobile services.

The acquisition comes as part of a large purchasing plan to acquire technology to develop Intel’s wireless and data centre offerings.

The purchasing plan has seen Intel move to acquire multiple businesses and intellectual properties, with past purchases including the $1.4 billion acquisition of Infineon Technologies' wireless division in 2011 and the purchasing of Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless Products, the U.S. based subsidiary of Fujitsu in 2013, as part of the companies plans to expand its mobile services.

Intel announces investments of $40 million

Intel loses market position as PC sales fall

EE has announced plans to invest £275 million in 2014 in developing the companies call handling capabilities.

The investment will include upgrades to 5,000 2G and 5,500 3G sites, increasing capacity, reliably and quality of service.

Funds will also be used to develop future call services including VoLTE and voice over Wi-Fi services.

EE CEO Olaf Swantee said: "This year, we have been focusing a large amount of our activity and investment on offering consumers the most reliable, highest quality phone call experience".

He added, “we plan to invest £275m in our voice call service in 2014 as we strive to set new standards in call quality and reliability."

Vodafone moves to acquire stake in German telecoms market

The government has revealed plans to make local authorities increasingly open and transparent, requiring them to publish details including data surrounding expenditure, staff payment, procurement and property estates.

The plans follow on from the voluntary transparency codes introduced in 2011, with the new plans being mandatory for all councils with income or expenditure in excess of £6.5 million.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is open to feedback or clarification until the 17th of January 2014.

Local government secretary Eric Pickles said: "Councils need to make sensible savings to help freeze Council Tax and protect frontline services. This new wave of town hall transparency will empower armchair auditors to expose municipal waste”.

“Greater power for local government must go hand in hand with greater local transparency and local accountability."

London councils look to create savings with outsourcing contracts