Industry news

The National Audit Office (NAO) confirmed ICT public sector savings of £316 million, generated from saving initiatives including contract renegotiation.

£64 million of the savings were generated from shared ICT including the Public Service Network, new initiatives enacted in 2012 are expected to increase ICT savings in the coming months.

While the NAO confirmed the success of the success of the government initiatives, more evidence needs to be provided to show evidence of progress in other areas, including innovation generation and increasing SME participation in favour of the dominance of large suppliers.

The success of rival companies such as Samsung has seen Apple to struggle, with the company posting the slowest profit growth since 2004.

Profits fell below analysts’ expectations with Apple falling 11 percent in New York trading yesterday.

Apple forecasts sales of $43 billion for the second fiscal quarter despite fears that the company is struggling to create a new innovative product after years of rapid growth since the introduction of the iPhone.

Meanwhile Samsung has capitalised on its success of the Galaxy series of smartphones, reporting profit growth on 89 percent, while Google’s Android handsets have become the most popular device worldwide.

Markets in Egypt, Turkey, South Africa Colombia, Indonesia and Vietnam are seeing high levels of growth and are predicted to outpace both Russian and Brazil in growth during 2013.

Global predictions made by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) also placed Mexico and South Korea and Europe within the analysts list of countries to watch over 2013, with countries within the Eurozone gradually moving away from economic stagnation.

Alasdair Ross, global product director at the EIU, predicted that the UK would struggle to move away from recession in comparison to Eurozone countries

A House of Commons Public Administration Committee, has heard from consultancy director and public procurement review author Colin Cram, on how the UK has benefitted from EU regulation with regulation being used as a scapegoat.

Colin said: “There can be improvements, but we have to be very careful we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

A separate co-author of a report into public procurement, Jon Hughes, said: “a lot of people hide behind the EU rules and regulations. There is no reason at all why we cannot simplify a lot, why we cannot speed up a lot and take a lot of bureaucracy out.”

As part of a cost-cutting exercise, Lloyds Banking Group is to offshore IT jobs to India, as part of the company’s move to outsource back office functions.

The offshoring of jobs by financial services organisations is expected to become commonplace in 2013, with a survey by CBI and PricewaterhouseCoopers revealing that 18,000 jobs are expected to be cut over the next quarter.

Barclays announced yesterday that the company would offshore back office staff and cut 2,000 staff globally.

It may seem as if cloud computing programs are intended to be the cure for any and all of the organisation or tech issues your SME experiences in day-to-day operations, but it's not. Cloud-based solutions are intended to act as tools to help you organise your SMB and be easy to use, so you won't rely on the IT department for cloud adoption and maintenance.

Is It for You?

A survey conducted by Forbes recently found that more than a quarter of the executives who took the survey (32 percent) still rely on their IT departments to adopt and maintain their companies' cloud-based programs. Hosting solutions, like Windows VPS, are meant to be easy to use and accommodate most cloud-based software solutions, so why is it that 26 percent of these SMEs preferred their cloud program be maintained by their IT department and only onsite? It does defeat the purpose of having your information and finances in "the cloud" if executives are going to be so protective and not allow "anywhere access" or refuse to trust their employees. Maybe the bigger issue is that not all business are ready for the cloud revolution, and there is no problem with that. Just because "cloud solutions" happen to be the latest trend doesn't mean that you must use one to run your business.

Ready, Set, Cloud

How can you tell if your business is ready for a cloud solution? Forbes' Joe McKendrick came up with a few great questions you should be asking a representative before you and your SMB make the flying leap to using cloud solution software. Here are a few:

Can the cloud program run on your current OS (operating system) and will it run your applications easily and seamlessly?

Will this solution meet our input and output requirements?

What are the data protection strategies and the costs for added storage?

How quickly can operations be restored if the main system goes down? Is there a backup system if the program blacks out?

Does the provider offer 24-hour customer service?

Also, consider asking yourself these questions:

Will moving to a cloud solution simplify my daily operations?

Can I trust employees, other than IT, to file reports on a cloud-based program?

Can I afford to make this transition at this stage in the game?

Do I need to build my business more before adopting a cloud-based solution as part of my company's operations.

Depending on what your answers are to the above questions will hinge greatly on what your next step should be. Cloud computing has made managing a small business more possible and practical. With a solid data recovery backup, easy-to-use CRM (customer relations management) software and other useful tools made available through a cloud-based solution, SMB executives can expect an all around easy to use, fully accessible solution for their business, if they're ready to hop on the cloud!

Rumours of a plan by Microsoft to invest figures of between $1 billion and $3 billion as part of a planned buyout have been triggered by a report from CNBC citing close sources.

Three way talks are reportedly being held between Dell, Microsoft and investment firm Silver Lake Partners with a goal to buyout Dell. The importance of Dell to Microsoft, in distributing the company’s software was given as a potential reason for the move.

Dell has been significantly hit by reduced hardware sales with the decline of the pc market and the impact of the global recession.

UK employment has fallen by 2.49 million between September and November 2012, reaching an 18 month record low.

Figures released by the ONS also showed that people in work rose to 29.7 million.

The positive figures were offset by increase in unemployment in younger working generations, with unemployment in18-24 year olds increasing.

Employment Minister Mark Hoban commented on the release of the figures, saying: “These are very positive figures showing employment rising for 15 months and despite difficult economic circumstances”.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne, welcomed the results but cautioned the “shaky foundations” of the UK job sector.

Businesses are potentially wasting significant resources in storing unnecessary data.

Gartner warned that businesses are spending 20 percent more than necessary on backing up unnecessary data, with more than $10 billion being wasted worldwide.

The research pointed to a failure by many businesses, to effectively update their backup policies, resulting in worthless data being retained.

Dave Russell, research vice-president of Gartner, said: “Often, the problem is that companies mistake backup technology for data archiving,” adding, “Backup is largely for operational recovery, not for long-term retention.”

BT has been selected by Westminster Council to overhaul the departments HR and finance system.

The delivery of the contract is expected to create savings of around £30 million and will involve a complete overhaul over an eight year period.

The overhaul will focus on shared services and integration across London boroughs and will provide a system with increased flexibility.

A further 17 boroughs have expressed interest in pursuing similar contracts with BT.