Industry news

A Sep 2013 report by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills reveals that IT specialists are the new force powering the UK economy as cyber security, mobile technologies, Green IT and cloud computing gain ground. It further adds that the digital sector will require nearly 300,000 new recruits by 2020 to maximise its full potential.

However, the report also reveals that the potential of the digital sector to boost economic growth is being hampered by a lack of skills. The IT skills shortfall is not due to a lack of talent in the UK. But it is because many computer science graduates are having difficulty breaking into the job market as there is an experience gap among IT students looking to make the transition from academia to the world of work. According to the CBI’s (Confederation of British Industry) latest education and skills survey, businesses are finding that too many STEM-qualified applicants don’t arrive rounded and ready for work. Graduates may have learned key skills during their degrees but many are lacking the ‘on-the-job’ experience that makes them attractive to employers. Add to this the fast paced development of SMAC technologies (social, mobility, analytics and cloud) and computer science degree programmes are actually struggling to keep pace with the demands of employers.

To address the skills requirement across India and the UK, Wipro is working with the UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKERI) to offer 19 UK engineering students and graduates a chance to spend nine months gaining valuable hands-on experience via its ‘India Gateway’ internship programme. India has been a leading player in the global IT outsourcing market for several years now and high-skilled Indian talent remains much sought after.

The internship programme not only offers valuable work experience to the participants, but it also provides these graduates with a global outlook - something that is becoming more and more important as our economies become increasingly globalised.

Ferdinand Ade Nsoh, an IT graduate from Lancaster University who is currently on the Wipro internship programme, believes that the experience will make him more attractive in the job market and the exposure to another culture will be invaluable in a globalised world of work. Similarly, Heer Shah, a business IT graduate from Coventry University, sees the experience of working and living in India as a serious wake up call to his approach to work. When asked about the experience, he said his work ethic had changed, helping him to become more passionate and driven.

Speaking to the graduates currently taking part in the internship programme, there are two areas of personal development that show strongly. Firstly, all of the graduates felt that the hands-on experience and new skills they are acquiring through the internship would definitely help to kick-start their careers in IT. Damon Simmonds, a Robotics and Cybertronics graduate from Heriot Watt University expressed his confidence that the programme will hold him in good stead as he pursues his career in IT.

The value of living and working in a different culture was also cited as a key benefit of the internship for the graduates. The contrast between UK and Indian cultures, they believe, has made them more adaptable to new situations and less afraid to do something out of their comfort zones. Sarah Handy, a Mathematics graduate from the University of Sussex stated that the experience of living in a different culture has made her more flexible in terms of her approach to work, more adaptable to a different way of working, and more open minded when it comes to different cultures and practices. Sarah believes this will impact dramatically on her career prospects for the future.

By fostering this kind of economic and educational collaboration between the UK and India, both countries can look towards a thriving future. Ultimately, such internships facilitate knowledge transfer that benefits both economies.

Sitel UK has become the first contact centre outsourcing company to sign up to the Government’s Think, Act, Report voluntary initiative to drive greater transparency on women’s workforce issues.

The initiative is designed to promote gender equality on key issues such as recruitment, retention, promotion and pay, and encourage companies to share information and practices on what action they are undertaking.

Karl Brough, UK Regional Director of Sitel comments: “Improving gender equality around recruitment and retention is very important to us as a UK employer of more than 2,400 people. We share a common desire to be more transparent about workforce issues and promote best practice and are delighted to join this initiative.”

Women and Equalities Minister Jo Swinson said: “We are delighted to have Sitel on board and hope it will encourage others to follow.”

Sitel named Global Contact Centre Outsourcing leader

Sitel issues five step guide for customer service in preparation for Christmas surge

Trafford Council has developed a tender for a customer relationship management framework, which may be rolled out to councils throughout the whole of North West England.

The tender for the council places the contract value at around £50,000 over a four-year period, however the framework contract winner could expect to receive follow-up business with the potential of other North West councils using the service.

The CRM framework, is according to the tendering notice, expected to deliver self-sufficiency and deliver IP for a customer services solution across multiple different agencies.

The tendering notice specified a company that could: "implement a CRM solution ready for delivery to all front line customer contact teams across the council and its partners, including the contact centre and customer access points".

Thanet District Council tends for HR and payroll system

Local authorities failing to collaborate on procurement

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