Industry news

Google, which earlier this month surpassed Microsoft in terms of value, saw its third-quarter profits slide because of spiralling costs and a decline in advertising prices.

It delivered revenues of $11.3bn in the third quarter, but these fell short of analyst estimates of $11.8bn, whilst profits tumbled to $2.18bn, down a fifth on the $2.73bn it made in the third quarter last year.

The results has been scheduled for publication after markets closed in New York, but they were accidentally released early, still with a gap for a quote from Google’s chief executive, Larry Page.

HP Helps Serco ASP Deliver High Quality Shared Services

HP has announced that Serco’s Anglia Support Partnership (Serco ASP), one of the UK's leading shared services providers, has selected HP to help improve the quality and efficiency of its healthcare services.

A robust, high-performance HP Converged Cloud solution based on HP CloudSystem and HP Storage will help Serco ASP improve essential services by managing people, processes, technology and assets more effectively.

Serco ASP provides a wide range of shared services to the NHS and other health-oriented organisations in the East of England, including recruitment, payroll, pensions, purchasing and financial services. The company currently produces 42,000 payslips per month on behalf of its customers from its integrated service centre in Huntingdon, and operates four primary care support centres in Cambridge, Ipswich, Witham and Norwich.

“Serco ASP needed a high performance, future-proof IT platform to support business growth, both geographically and into other market sectors,” said Mark Smith, Head of IT at Serco ASP.

HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCL), a leading global IT services provider, has announced results for the quarter ended September 30 2012. HCL’s quarterly revenues increased by 3.2% QoQ to US$ 1,114 mn.

HCL’s European business posted a revenue increase of 16.4% YoY in Q1 FY2013 and 2.8% QoQ in the first quarter of FY 2013. This geography contributed 28% to HCL Technologies’ revenues.

Commenting on the results, Stuart Drew, Executive Vice President – Europe, HCL Technologies said “Europe remains key for HCL’s success with a sound growth of 16.4% YoY. The new financial year has begun with key engagements across industries.”

Europe highlights for the quarter:

• HCL has established a Centre of Excellence for SAP Visual Enterprise (VE) in the UK, to serve its European customers.

• HCL has been chosen by a Top 5 global pharmaceutical company for a multi-year, multi-service managed services engagement encompassing end-to-end application support.

• HCL has won an engagement with a leading media & publishing company to provide enhancement support for its Salesforce.com applications.

• HCL has entered into a global partnership with SuccessFactors, a SAP company, and a global market leader in cloud-based software designed for Human Capital Management. Under the alliance agreement, HCL will provide implementation services, license referrals, and a general operating program for the SuccessFactors Business Execution (BizX) suite to customers in North America, Europe, Latin & South America, Asia Pacific and India.

IBM has expanded its cloud, Big Data and mobile based security offerings as it seeks to take advantage of the expanding data security market.

Announced services include database monitoring capabilities, cloud based automated patching and mobile cloud access applications.

The move will see the IT giant expand into markets where it will see increased completion with rival company HP.

The announcement comes as IBM saw a 5 percent reduction in year-over-year profits during third-quarter announcements and experienced static growth in net income.

China’s economy saw a slow down for the seventh quarter, impacted by the global economic slowdown which has resulted in GDP growth missing government targets.

While GDP expanded by 7.4 percent from last year, the figure represents a significant slowdown in growth from an average 10 percent increase in the past three decades.

Premier Wen Jiabao was reported by local media to have said that the economy in the third quarter was relatively good and that economic growth goals of 7.5 percent were still achievable.

Transport group Go-Ahead has announced that it is aiming for profits of £100 million from the running of bus services within Britain by 2015/16.

The company operates around 4,600 buses serving 1.7 million passengers daily with annual revenue returns of £70 million.

Go-Ahead have said that they expect to achieve such profits through, “high quality services, innovation and marketing and cost efficiency”.

The Gov.uk site has gone live, replacing redundant sites Directgive and Business Link, with the promise of generating £70 million in savings.

As part of a three stage transition process, the site has now gone live, with the remaining stages involving the migration of government departments across to the new site by March 2014.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, said: “The public wants services to be delivered better, and with GOV.UK we are responding with a digital platform that makes services quicker and easier to use, and produces efficiencies for government."

Telefonica Digital expects to save at least 30 to 40 percent through cloud based HR software over the next three years.

The communications giant has invested millions in procuring HR software from Workday, however expected savings would deliver savings that paid for the investment within two years.

The system will consolidate applications while providing a flexible platform that can be rapidly implemented.

HR costs have also been achieved through the promotion of BYOD and integration of HR systems across different regions.

Facebook has today opened the first no-US based engineering centre in London. The centre will be involved with building Facebook mobile as the company seeks to develop and invest in the technology.

The London based centre will draw on the cities engineering talent pool, and will focus on ways to optimise server performance and storage in relation to mobile applications.

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s vice-president of engineering, said: “Mobile also offers tremendous revenue and advertising opportunities for us”.

Failures in data protection have seen Greater Manchester Police hit with a £120,000 fine from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

The fine related to the loss of personal data from over 1,000 people following the theft of a memory stick, including information relating to serious crimes.

An investigation from the ICO found that the force used no encryption, had no restrictions on downloading information from police computers and had insufficient data protection training for staff.

David Smith, ICO Director of Data Protection, said: “This is a substantial monetary penalty, reflecting the significant failings the force demonstrated. We hope it will discourage others from making the same data protection mistakes.”