Industry news

IT services supplier Fujitsu has announced the creation of 192 jobs in Northern Ireland.

The jobs will be situated in the company’s new Business Services Centre in Derry, Northern Ireland, with the new roles including business support, HR, finance and administration positions.

The job announcement comes as Fujitsu announces funding of £12 million for Northern Ireland, over the next three years. The funding will be used to create another business Services Centre at its current Timber Quay site.

Greg McDaid, client managing director of Northern Ireland at Fujitsu, said: “This Business Services Centre will now form an important part of our overall strategy to achieve business growth in this region and the choice of Timber Quay is a reflection on the highly skilled and motivated workforce as well as the excellent telecommunications infrastructure that we know exist here.”

Fujitsu pledges to attract UK SMEs

E-payment provider Worldline and fraud prevention company ReD create a strategic partnership in order to enhance Worldline’s payment and fraud protection services.

ReD under the partnership will make its real-time fraud prevention services available to Worldline’s merchant customers throughout the world – in France, Benelux, Germany, UK, Spain, India and other Asian countries.

Manish Patel, regional president EMEA, at ReD, commented: “We are very pleased to formalise our partnership with Worldline as we have been working alongside each other, supporting joint merchant customers in France, since our successful entry to the market last year.”

Xavier Brucker, Head of Multichannel Payment, from Wordline added: “We have a strong commitment to providing the most advanced and innovative solutions to our customers.

Integration of the ReD Shield solution and expertise will enhance our fraud prevention services for Merchant Services online payments globally, so we can offer our clients personalized protection adapted to specific regulations.”

HMRC tenders for supplier for fraud prevention and credit check role

A report carried out by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG’s) failed to gain enough information on contract costs, such as analyzing what outcomes would be delivered, even if the DCLG’s scheme had not been in place.

The scheme involved the department paying local authorities for the number of troubled families that authorities brought to the help scheme.

The scheme seeks to help families into work and bring children back into school, in order to reduce the strain on social services.

The NAO report said that while the payment-by-results scheme had helped to increase focus on achieving outcomes: ““There is a lack of information on costs and the non-intervention rate (the level of outcomes that would have been achieved without the programmes). Without this information, there is an increased risk that the outcome payments will be set either too high or too low.”

The report added: “Whilst payment-by-results has benefits, both departments could have done more to understand its risks. Neither department is likely to achieve all the potential benefits of using payments-by-results. And performance varies significantly between the best and worst performing local authorities and the best and worst performing contractors.”

NAO warns public sector on out-dated ICT risks

A report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has found that the Border Force IT systems are ‘inadequate’ and that development plans are ‘unrealistic’.

The report stated that IT systems risks collapsing and that targets for passenger checks are unlikely to be achieved due to the current state of Border Force procurement.

The report identified that the Border Forces’ use of the e-Borders programme as a at risk area, given that the e-Borders scheme has already come under criticism earlier in the year.

The PAC report called for the Border Force to underline how it would deliver new IT services required to meet targets, including the carrying out of exit checks on 80 per cent of passengers by 2015.

"There are worrying gaps in the intelligence data available to the Border Force and its IT systems are not up to the job”, said PAC chair Margaret Hodge MP said.

Immigration minister Mark Harper, said: "It will take time to transform Border Force and fix all the problems we inherited but I am confident that we are making the right changes. None of the issues raised in this report come as a surprise and they are already being actively addressed.”

Home Office awards contracts for visa applications services

UK e-borders scheme criticised

European aerospace giant EADS has undertaken a restructuring programme which will see a reduction of jobs of around 5,800 in order to create job savings.

The announcement of cuts also included the announcement of the selling of the EADS headquarters in Paris.

The majority of redundancies will be situated in defence and space departments and come as European spending has fallen as countries look to reduce spending.

The move is likely to meet heavy opposition from unions, with union giant Force Ouvriere having already announced its plans to resist the plans.

Shareholders have reacted positively to the announcement with shares rising after the announcement.

UK moves ahead with outsourcing MoD hardware procurement

BAE move to increase ties to EADS after the end of merger talks

UK graduates do not have the rights skills for big data jobs according to a new survey of senior executives.

Only 1 in 10 UK firms looks at graduates when recruiting for big data roles according to a new report carried out by OnePoll on the behalf of Teradata.

72 per cent of respondents said that graduates were not considered because they lacked the necessary skills for a role in big data projects.

60 per cent of respondents said that it was difficult to find workers with the right mix of skills as IT education has struggled to keep pace with developments in the IT industry and the rise of big data.

The survey revealed that businesses are increasingly looking for candidates with technical skills over business skills.

Skills gap result in undervaluing of Big Data

Customer data on the wane

Unify, formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications, has announced a new flexible licensing model in order to meet increasing consumer demand for flexible services.

The new service is being advertised as driving improved costs savings, and allows customers to add user licences at a fixed price.

The new licensing model provides a simple program designed for ease of use with a clear pricing structure.

Brian Riggs, Principal Analyst at Ovum, said: “Unify’s new licensing should increase customers’ interest in purchasing UC solutions, as well as make it easier for them to select the package that makes sense for them.”

Frederic Simard, Vice President, Pricing and Portfolio Commercialization for Unify said: “Enterprise Licensing continues our commitment to make it easier to do business with Unify and provides customers with a selection of relevant, user-centric packages with no hidden costs or surprises and the flexibility to accommodate future business needs.”

Vodafone looking to the future after selling its stake in Verizon Wireless

NHS England has created a £100 million fund, in order to promote innovative technology to improve patient care.

The fund known as the Nursing Technology Fund, will be used to support the development of mobile and digital services, with a focus on increasing the flexibility and mobility of technology available to health staff.

The funding for technology is seen as a way to increase efficiencies by reducing administration including the amount of paperwork that NHS employees have to complete, and improve the quality of care services.

Jane Cummings, chief nursing officer for England, said: “Demands on the NHS have changed dramatically over the years and it is vital that as a health service we change and modernise so our patients get the best possible care”.

The health secretary, MP Jeremy Hunt, said: “Nurses and midwives chose their profession because they wanted to spend time caring for patients, not filling out paperwork. New technology can make that happen. It’s better for patients too, who will get swifter information, safer care and more face-to-face time with NHS staff”.

NHS Shared Business Services announces legal services framework appointments

NHS trust requests increased funding for paperless transformation

Last month Amazon Web Services announced it was entering the Hosted Desktop market to compete with other multi-national players including Citrix, VMWare and soon Microsoft, who is working on its own DaaS solution.

Amazon’s entry to this market establishes the Hosted Desktop as a solid choice for the IT needs of a company and is a clear indicator of future growth of this sector as a whole, or as President John F. Kennedy put it, ‘ A rising tide lifts all boats’ and Amazon can definitely create a tide. With competition accelerating, it might be helpful to examine how the newcomers’ products might stack up against the hosted desktops currently being offered by smaller hosted desktop service providers.

The most commonly used desktop today is Microsoft software (with well over 90% of desktop O/S being provided by Microsoft according to Net Market Share www.netmarketshare.com), so it is reasonable to assume that Microsoft will be able to offer this software as a service.

However, unlike Office 365 or Google Apps, which are respectively solely Microsoft or Google products, the desktop is the place where customers can view and access all their software, not only Microsoft. When sitting in the office in front of their desktop, the user will usually find a range of icons representing many different software vendors, most of which are not Microsoft.

Independent Hosted Desktop vendors that specialise in providing a Virtual Hosted Desktop service can host more than 100 different software products from over 100 different companies for their customers. These can include software for accounting, CRM, CV management, inventory, time tracking for legal billing and many more.

However, for a large software vendor to provide a similar service, they will need to simplify the product so that every piece of 3rd party software is designed for their platform in the same way that apps are designed for Android and IOS. If all software cannot seamlessly link into the desktop, then professional services are required to set up customers, add and remove software, set up directories and deal with applications with diverse performances.

For many businesses, IT still has its complexities, and to simplify it for the user, the business needs an IT department or in the case of an SMB business, a Hosted Desktop provider.

Yes, small businesses that require only files and emails (and are somewhat IT savvy) can replace their IT support with ‘off the shelf’ solutions such as Office 365 and Google Apps, but for a business that has databases, servers, non-Microsoft software packages, or has backup and redundancy requirements, a more personalised and tailored solution is needed.

Using an independent provider a business can maintain a high degree of flexibility, this is because independents can offer to ‘mix’ vendors, such as hosting a Microsoft Desktop on Amazon Web Services, or even by hosting an antiquated ‘green screen’ IBM AS400. They will also be able to offer Citrix or Microsoft’s RDP, Hosted Linux OS, Parallels for Macs and other products. Whether the big companies offering Hosted Desktop solutions will inform the customers of the variety of competing software or give preference to their own software is yet to be seen.

Lastly a ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) model means that customers no longer buy a license but rather rent it, while the software and all the data associated with the software including personal data are hosted by the provider, sometimes outside the EU. While this is adequate for many customers, others might prefer to ensure their data is hosted within the UK or EU by EU companies for legal or regulatory reasons – particularly in light of comments made recently by Viviane Reding, the Vice President of the European Commission[i] about data protection outside the EU potentially adhering to lower standards.

If moving to a Hosted Desktop solution is on the cards for 2014, business decision makers need to consider their options carefully. If their business requirements are simple –they just use email, don’t have a in-house servers or an IT department then an ‘off the shelf’ solution such as Google apps or Office365 would be appropriate.

However, if a business is too mature and sophisticated for a simple ‘off the shelf’ product, yet too nimble to justify a costly full internal IT department, a tailored bespoke Hosted Desktop is not only cost-effective, hassle-free and environmentally friendly; it is probably the best technical solution on the market.

Here are some considerations for anyone moving to a hosted desktop solution in 2014:

• Price is a key consideration, but so is security, flexibility, location and the quality of the customer service from the provider.

• When considering price, ensure apples are compared with apples. Does the price quoted include e-mail, support, set-up, storage, anti-virus and spam filters?

• Security – check the provider is ISO 27000 accredited and verify the quality of their Data Centre. Is anti-virus software and enterprise grade firewalls included as part of the solution?

• Flexibility – is your managed service provider independent? Are they tied to one software provider or can they create the perfect, tailored solution for your business?

• Location – is it important for you to have you data stored by a UK company in the UK?

• Customer Service – is it local and how quickly will the customer services team respond? Does this service cost extra?

• References - what do other customers have to say about the provider? Make sure you obtain references to ensure you are making the right decision.

David Cameron has called for industries to create fast-track visa schemes in the UK for talented workers.

Tech City UK will work with the Home Office in order to facilitate a visa scheme by April 2014, allowing foreign entrepreneurs with the right skill set to gain access to the UK job market.

The visa scheme will now free up businesses, such as it start-ups situated in Tech City, to employ workers from a wide variety of sources, freeing firms from being restricted to a limited pool of talent and helping UK businesses react to skills shortages.

The Prime Minister said: “We are determined to build a rebalanced economy across the country and get behind the entrepreneurs imagining a new tomorrow in the dozens of technology clusters, accelerators and start-up incubators across Britain."

He added that: "Today, Tech City serves not only as an example of how a city can be transformed into an engine for growth and innovation, but it is also a blueprint for fostering growth that has been recognised globally".

U.S have imposed a record visa fine on outsourcer

UK Prime Minister looks to strengthen trade links with China