Industry news

Amazon Web Services (AWS) are looking to introduce a new online storage system named ‘Glacier’.

The new storage service would offer cheap storage, from $0.01 per gigabyte a month. The service has been designed for archival data, aimed at data that would not have to be accessed rapidly, with expectations of retrieval being in the hours rather than minutes.

The service is designed to replace tape archives as a backup technology, with Amazon describing “older tape libraries are less efficient and therefore costlier to operate”.

Bristol City Council are to move to an open source record and management system in a bid to reduce operational spending by £70 million.

The new electronic management tools are to be supplied by Alfresco, with services accessible through mobile devices.

Gavin Beckett, chief enterprise architect, described the councils move to further open source projects through the G-Cloud, saying: “We are actively investigating G-Cloud, and revising our multi-sourcing strategy”.

Glencore's chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, has revealed that Glencore would be willing to walk away from acquiring mining company Xstrata.

Glasenberg said that the deal was not a "must-do deal", after demands to raise the £30 billion offer for the company.

"If it takes another year, another two years or even another five years we can revisit the deal whenever. In the meantime, no one else can do anything while we hold our 35 per cent stake in Xstrata," said Glasenberg.

Research from the quarterly Mobile Workforce Report by iPass has shown that employees are working up to 20 unpaid hours more because of BYOD.

A survey showed that a third of employees did not disconnect from technology during non-work hours while only eight percent disconnected during holidays.

Rene Hendrikse, VP of EMEA at iPass, said: “BYOD is effectively turning us into a generation of productive workaholics, with many workers seemingly happy to work during their downtime in exchange for flexibility in how and where they work”.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has declared that the UK will have the fastest broadband speed in Europe by 2015.

Hunt detailed that the government is planning to invest £300 million generated from the television licence fee into high-speed broadband services, with the view of increasing speeds above 24Mbit/s for over 90 percent of the UK.

Hunt said that UK broadband was already competing competitively with European countries: "Two thirds of the population are now on packages of more than 10 Mbit/s, higher than anywhere in Europe except Portugal and perhaps surprisingly Bulgaria".

The owners of Orange and T-Mobile, Everything Everywhere, have been approved by Ofcom to launch new 4G services from the 11th of September.

The new 4G services would be launched through the existing bandwidths of the two companies, with the service allowing for increased broadband speeds.

Vodafone and O2 both registered disappointment with the decision, however Ofcom said that the "significant benefits" of the service were greater than competition concerns.

The merger of Youku and Tudou as the largest online video company in China moves closer to finalisation, as shareholders of both companies agree on the plan.

The merger would reduce costs and boost the market share of both companies, desirable with the backdrop of rising streaming and bandwidth costs.

The merger, originally announced in March, will see Youku acquire Tudou through a $1 billion stock exchange.

The UK government is planning to launch a global NHS expansion this autumn, with the goal to link NHS hospitals with foreign governments.

The move is designed to exploit demand from foreign intuitions for NHS services and capitalise on the Olympic focus on the service as seen with Danny Boyle’s homage to the NHS.

Areas focused on would include those already exposed to UK medical services including the Gulf, India, Brazil and China.

Profits made my NHS hospitals abroad would be reinvested back within the UK. The plan would see NHS trusts partner with private companies in order to receive funding for overseas expansion and reduce financial risk.

BAA has given up on its three-year battle against the 2009 ruling by the Competition Commission for the company to sell the site.

Stansted Airport ranks as the 3rd largest and 4th busiest airport in the UK. The sale is expected to raise over £1 billion, with Manchester Airport Group marked as one of the preferred bidders.

BAA commented that: “There isn't a single airline which flies out of Stansted which operates out of Heathrow. But the legal advice was that we should not challenge the Supreme Court.”

The Transport Committee and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) are expected to call on both executives from FirstGroup and Virgin Rail as well as the ministers involved in the £13 billion contract.

The two committees are expected to focus on figures which show that FirstGroup’s successful offer will not see a return in profits until 2022.

FirstGroup’s successful bid has attracted criticism from Virgin, with Sir Richard Branson criticising the procurement process and questioning the ability of the group to manage the service.

Margaret Hodge, PAC chairman, said that she felt that the offer was “over-optimistic about passenger numbers and economic growth”.