Industry news

By transitioning email providers Warwickshire Council is expecting to see savings of £250,000.

Service options included Microsoft Office 365, Google, IBM, Exchange, and open source offering Zimbra via supplier Savv, with Google winning out on high cost-efficiency.

The council has now moved to a department wide roll-out of Google Gmail, the service transition will also allow the 4,500 council staff access to Google services including Google Docs, IM, video conferencing and greater archive space.

Cloud services provided by Google will meet suitable security accreditation for the majority of the council’s requirements. Tonino Ciuffini, CIO at Warwickshire County Council, said: “The real benefit has been instant availability of services. It reduces the time for delivery”.

The council is looking to future collaboration with G-Cloud services, with expectations on a major procurement contract being agreed on within the next 12 months.

NHS Trust looks for suppliers for IT supply contract worth up to 100 million

China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, has called for increased “rules and cooperation” during a press conference, saying that China represented one of the countries that “faces the most severe cyber-attacks" in the whole world.

In the press conference Yang Jiechi described how China supported U.N. legislation on Internet security and pressed for the need for cooperation between nations, rather than the development of increasing cyberwarfare.

China has been repeatedly accused of carrying out state sponsored cyber-attacks against western government, with calls growing in the U.S. to retaliate in kind.

Yang Jiechi responded to the criticism, saying: “I hope that the relevant parties will stop the irresponsible attacks and criticism, and instead take practical actions to promote mutual trust and cooperation”.

U.S. military IT infrastructure unprepared for cyber attacks

According to research from the Computing Research Association (CRA), numbers of U.S. undergraduates taking computing majors increased by more than 29 percent during last year’s academic year.

The CRA survey also found that graduates were continuing in education to higher levels, with an 8.2 increase in those earning a Ph.D. from the previous year.

The rise has come as graduates increasingly become of aware of the importance of IT, with skills in high demand, with many science field demanding applicants with a high level of computer literacy.

Peter Harsha, the CRA's director of government affairs, said that computer degree uptake is based somewhat: “on the perceived strength of the IT sector”.

Under-utilisation of skills is hampering innovation

BAE Systems Detica have been select as the preferred bidder for delivering a service management integration framework (SMI) by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

The contract, which is expected to be signed over summer, will see the selected supplier managing FCO’s range of suppliers delivering services to more than 260 estates around the world, delivering to more than 1,400 employees. As the supplier BAE will also seek to drive efficiencies and reduce costs through system improvements.

The global framework contract is expected to be worth as much of £80 million over the six year contract length.

Managing Director of BAE Systems Detica, Martin Sutherland, said that BAE was looking in the coming months: “to deliver a solution for the FCO that allows the organisation to achieve dynamic resilience in its IT infrastructure across the world.”

BAE and Vodafone create security product partnership

A NatWest spokesman has revealed that the fault which made key customer services unavilable to millions on Wednesday 6th of March for a number of hours, was due to a mainframe hardware fault.

The mainframe error effected customers of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank, stopping users accessing online banking service, cash machines or from making payments.

The inability to access services brought back memories of a three day service outage effecting RBS services in June 2012. However the two similar incidents are not connected according to RBS.

The impact of the service disruption seems to have varied from customer to customer, with some users still being unable to access services on the following day.

A RBS spokesman said: “This problem was caused by a hardware fault and was not related to the issues we experienced last summer.”

RBS say offshoring services to India were not responsible for IT outage

Pakistan has begun construction on its end of a natural gas pipeline between Pakistan and Iran. The 2,775 km long pipe valued at $7.5 billion is expected to be completed within the next two years, with the Iranian side of the pipe nearing completion.

The pipe itself is expected to help Pakistan deal with energy demand, with the country’s energy infrastructure frequently failing to provide stable power or prevent blackouts.

The construction project has been met with opposition from the U.S. which has asked Pakistan to exit the project.

India had originally been involved in the early stages of the gas line project but has since pulled out, with a signing of a nuclear deal with the U.S. pre-empting the pull-out.

Pakistan has also been approached by other parties including Saudi Arabia and the U.S. with alternative energy solutions.

Pakistan’s Allied Bank outsource mobile finance to American Sybase

Four train companies have begun legal action against the government for costs incurred during the procurement process for the Great Western rail franchise.

The scrapping of the procurement process following a move by the government to re-evaluate the bidding process in light of the public sector failings behind the West Coast mainline, resulted in bidders losing millions.

FirstGroup, Stagecoach, Arriva and National Express have moved to undertake legal action against the government in a bid to recoup losses, with the government being potentially liable for as much as £40 million in costs.

The government has played down the issue of legal action in the past, with Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin saying in January: "In keeping with the relevant invitations to tender, which made clear that bidders are responsible for their own costs, the secretary of state does not believe it would be appropriate to reimburse bidders."

The success of legal action is further called into question with the bidding tender itself detailing that:“Each bidder shall be responsible for all costs, expenses and liabilities incurred by it in connection with the Great Western franchise letting process, whether or not its bid and/or associated negotiations are ultimately successful or the process is subsequently varied in any way or terminated."

The BBC has revealed that legal proceedings are expected to hold until the end of March, in order to allow for the offer of compensation.

Report says basic errors tore apart West Coast rail franchise

BT having successfully won 100 percent of all superfast broadband contacts as part of the Government’s EU funded move to modernise the UK’s infrastructure, are creating 1,000 new jobs.

The telecoms giant's investment in new staff is focused on supporting individuals who have recently entered the job market, as well as the unemployed, with 400 of the new positions being two year minimum apprenticeships, while 200 of the jobs will be aimed at ex armed service employees.

Prime minster David Cameron said: “I warmly welcome the announcement from BT. Working with business, the government is driving a transformation in UK broadband services and with an extra 100,000 homes and businesses gaining superfast broadband availability each week, this is already taking shape.”

BT secures a further two superfast broadband projects

Systems integrators who had traditionally delivered up to 80 percent of public sector IT work are heavily cutting prices in order to compete with the G-Cloud.

The G-Cloud is being promoted by the government as the key to significant cost savings across departments by introducing competition and the cross-sharing of information in order to drive savings.

The system integrators which had traditionally enjoyed an effective stranglehold on government department IT contracts are now attempting to entice departments from turning to cloud services with discounted rates and by matching prices offered on the cloud service.

Director of the G-Cloud Programme Denise McDonagh has criticised the cost reduction: “That makes me furious for two reasons. One, you should be moving to a different way of buying and reducing your dependency on the big SIs. But it makes me more furious that an SI can either deliver that service a lot cheaper than they previously said or they are taking a loss.”

Public Cloud market to increase by $20 billion in 2013

The London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSE) move to acquire a majority stake in cleaning house LCH is expected to generate millions of pounds in savings.

The deal for a 57.8 percent stake will allow the two businesses to share and condense IT systems. Cross sharing operations between the two groups is expected to be able generate savings of as much as £21 million per year.

The control of LCH will allow LSE to increase the diversity of its clients and overall market share in addition to the cost savings generated from the sharing of services.

“Together, we see significant revenue opportunities opening up as a result of both customer and regulatory demand for more efficient and more sophisticated tools to manage market risk”, said LCH Clearnet CEO Ian Axe.

UK tech investment at highest levels in a decade