Industry news

Predictions from research firm Gartner place IT giant Lenovo at the top of the China’s smartphone market by 2013.

Lenovo has rapidly expanded into the smartphone market, overreaching Gartner’s expectations and achieving a 1.7 percent share in the Chinese market in less than two years from entering.

Lenovo is now ranked second with the marketplace with a 14.8 percent share compared to leaders Samsung with 16.7 percent.

Gartner analyst Sandy Shen said: “We think Lenovo will depend on the low-end market to sell handsets, so it will allow Lenovo to obtain a much larger share."

Local UK authorities may face a bill of £1 billion for the roll-out of super-fast broadband across the country (BDUK).

The approval by the European Commission will provide a £530 million fund for the installation of broadband infrastructure however the estimated cost for the rollout of broadband is £1.5 billion leaving local authorities with a potential bill of £1 billion.

Further funding for BDUK is expected to be delivered through the private sector in exchange for provide broadband infrastructure delivery.

Royal Mail have revealed plans to update and replace 120,000 Personal Digital Assistant devices, the phased scheme is expected to cost £300 million.

The contract is expected to last five years with an extension option, covering both the support and provision of the PDA devices.

A release from the Royal Mail stated: “The supplier of services will be required to deliver a high level of integration and collaboration with other relevant providers of IT related services to the Royal Mail Group.”

Major US military contractor Lockheed Martin has been selected by UK government to provide IT support services for the G-Cloud 2.

The contract includes the provision of software and infrastructure in addition to the hosting and storage of public sector data.

The launch of G-Cloud 2 is expected to generate sales of £100 million with significant business heading to SMEs.

The merger between mining and commodities giants Xstrata and Glencore is expected to be approved today by the EU competition commission.

The approval is expected to be confirmed today with the stipulation that Glencore ends the sell off of Swiss based smelting company Nyrstar.

The merger is also expected to be confirmed by the South African competition commission after the regulator gave a green light to the move.

The UK government have received the approval from the EU to carry forward the £530 million broadband development project.

EU approval will secure funding from the union and was finalised after competition concerns regarding the dominance of BT as a supplier were alleviated.

The project will see the role out of superfast broadband throughout the UK with 90 percent of homes receiving the new superfast service.

Maria Miller, Secretary of state for culture, media and sport, said: “getting the green light from Brussels will mean a huge boost for the British economy. Superfast broadband is essential to creating growth, jobs and prosperity and the delay has caused frustration within government. Today’s announcement means that we can crack on with delivering broadband plans, boosting growth and jobs around the country.”

Research gathered by Information Services Group (ISG) has shown that IT outsourcing projects involving cloud have tripled since 2010.

ISG have reported that 300 IT cloud outsourcing contracts will be approved in 2012 compared to 220 in the previous year.

The development of cloud as a trend has been fuelled by the increased deployment of SaaS and IaaS and competition platforms

A European scientific cloud service called Helix Nebula is to receive support from the GÉANT network.

GÉANT is co-funded by the European Commission and is used by the Education and National Research networks.

A statement from GÉANT said: “GÉANT has joined the Helix Nebula partnership in order to take an active role in the development of what we consider the natural solution for cloud computing in Europe. GÉANT is a key element in continuing our leadership in enabling researchers worldwide to collaborate.”

Good governance is critical to the success of any outsourcing venture. It is an enterprise wide, overarching corporate function, aimed at delivering innovation, value and mitigating risk to the business. An exclusive sourcingfocus.com roundtable, in association with IBM and the NOA,examined how governance should provide a management continuum throughout the outsourcing life-cycle to provide a consistent and appropriate focus on strategic outcomes.

PasS (platform as a service) is expected to be worth an estimated $2.9 billion by 2016 according to Gartner.

The analyst giant predicts the 900 million increase from 2011 figures as the market expands in countries including Japan and the US and technology matures.

The PaaS market is still heavily competitive within itself and with main rival SaaS, the rapid growth over the next four years will be fuelled by fierce competition says Gartner, as cloud providers and enterprise software supplies fight for market dominance.

Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner, said: “PaaS is where the battle between suppliers and products is set to intensify the most.”