Industry news

Facebook shares fell to $20 yesterday after having fallen from the opening stock price of $38 a share.

The announcement comes after Facebook admitted that around 83 million of its users were duplicate or illegitimate profiles.

The popularity of mobile devices has limited Facebook’s advertising draw, the company said: "Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results," Facebook wrote in its IPO filing in May.

The Digital Policy Alliance (DPA) a industry group including companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM and Cisco, has been formed in order to campaign for action regarding UK broadband.

The group has a history of providing industry expertise to governments. The forming of the DPA comes after a House of Lords Communications Committee report criticised broadband competition.

Secretary general of the DPA, Edward Phelps, said: “Government has failed to inject competition into the broadband market leaving many innovative providers unable to offer their services. The current approach would appear completely at odds with the localism agenda”.

BT have announced the completion of its Wi-Fi network in London for the Olympics with 500,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the capital.

The network is free to BT broadband customers and available for access by purchase for non-customers.

Andy Baker, CEO of BT Wi-Fi, said: “We’re giving Londoners and visitors as many places as possible to get online, keep in touch, work and share their experiences of the exciting events happening across London.”

Both Vodafone and Barclays have announced investment in East London’s Tech City.

Vodafone will invest in a new technology center in the area providing capital in order to create links to upcoming start-ups. Barclays are set to create an entrepreneurial centre in proximity to the Google Campus.

Chancellor George Osborne highlighted the success of investment in an area with Barclays’ partnership with Central Working, expected to provide support for 22,000 businesses over five years.

Trade and Investment Minister Lord Green, said of the new investments: “This announcement is an excellent reflection of Tech City’s success as a thriving hub of innovative technology companies, combined with ready access to Europe’s largest venture capital community”.

The London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Brent, Lambeth, Lewisham, Havering and Croydon have employed shared services from Oracle.

The service is expected to save £18 million over four years with implementation complete by June 2013.

The shared services technology will support HR, payroll, procurement and pension services. Mike Suarez, executive director of finance and resources at Lambeth council, said: “platform lends itself enabling us to share things like servers and applications team for supporting software, as well as taking a shared approach to training.”

Fujitsu have been awarded a contract from BAA to provide network support to Heathrow Terminal 2.

The outsourcing contract is worth around £20 million and will include services ranging from security to check-in and other critical service infrastructure.

The new Heathrow terminal will be finished in 2014 and costing £4.8 billion, with 40 airport systems located in the building.

Fujitsu and NEC have teamed together with Japanese based phone operator NTT DoCoMo, in order to design and create semiconductor chips for mobile devices.

The partnership will aim to design chips aimed at reducing the need for multiple chips by consolidating functions.

The new venture will see shared distributed between Fujitsu- 52.8 percent, NEC- 17.8 percent, NTT DoCoMo- 19.9 percent and the remaining 9.5 percent held by Fujitsu Semiconductor.

A statement released by the partnership said: ““The technologies individually held by the companies, as well as the results of their joint development work, offer a huge competitive advantage in the smartphone market, which is expected to experience an even greater global expansion.”

Google has acquired Wildfire Interactive who provides social media marketing.

The company specialises in increasing brand presence throughout social media and provides a service platform for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

While details of the purchase were not disclosed, the move comes as many large technology companies move to increase their social media offering.

Wildfire founders Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard, said: “the combination of Wildfire and Google can lead to a better platform for managing all digital media marketing”.

A report from the Public Accounts Committee has attacked the dumping of raw data into the public sector.

In a report from the Committee entitled ‘Implementing the Transparency Agenda’, the releasing of raw unworkable data which was difficult for public sector departments to use, was focused upon.

MP Margaret Hodge, said the data “must be accessible, relevant and easy for us all to understand. Otherwise the public cannot use it to make comparisons and exercise choice, which is the key objective of the transparency drive.”

A Forrester report has revealed that IT professionals are facing major IT difficulties, with 90 percent of respondents revealing that they had such issues.

The survey revealed that a majority of businesses are employing multiple automation technologies.

As organisations are facing greater pressures to employ bid data, alongside business analytics and cloud platforms, business are employing multiple automation techniques to support these new services.

While the survey demonstrated that IT specialist viewed automation as being vital in improving efficiency the service was also reported to be linked to critical errors.