Industry news

It has certainly been a high profile couple of weeks for outsourcing.

Headlines such as ‘outsourcing: can it ever work?’ and 'humiliated' G4S to claim millions’ have really put outsourcing under the spotlight and negative press coverage has simply snowballed.

As the G4S story unravels hourly it seems not only were there critical flaws in the governance plan, change management, and the IT infrastructure but the partnership between the Government and G4S seemed doomed from the start due to an ineffective communications strategy.

What Theresa May is learning is that you cannot simply outsource risk. You can outsource the management but the issue will still be there and governance is a key part of that.

The issue of increasing a workforce from 2000 to 10,000 in a short time period is a huge undertaking and would require some serious change control from any organisation. It certainly raises the question as to what governance G4S and the Government had in place and if an effective plan along with the right people were involved in any way?

On a day to day basis, outsourcing relationships are a great success and provide knowledge, cost benefits, expertise and efficiencies to organisations of all sizes across the world. It is a shame that such a prominent failure has tainted the industry at a time when the public sector needs to make heavy cuts while keeping as many services as possible for us – the taxpayers.

Until the dust settles, G4S need to take their punishment and the Government should reflect on how they communicate with and manage their suppliers. Sharing best practice and our industry’s successes is the way forward. Not only to combat some of the negative press but to share the wealth of knowledge we have amassed and prove the value that outsourcing adds at both enterprise and national level.

The NOA’s Outsourcing Works Campaign aims to do just this and set the record straight through an upcoming research project that will unequivocally prove the benefits that outsourcing brings to the UK economy.

So hopefully some good news on the way – just remember don’t blame outsourcing for this Olympic debacle, one swallow does not make a summer..

BT has secured a tender to provide fibre-optic broadband to North Yorkshire.

The contract is part of the governmental Broadband delivery UK (BDUK) programme which will see an investment of £17.8 million combined with £8.6 million from the European Regional Development Fund to deploy broadband to 90 percent of the UK by 2014.

The contract will see BT provide speeds up to 330Mbps. Carl Les, the deputy leader of North Yorkshire County Council and chairman of the Connecting North Yorkshire project said: “North Yorkshire is a large rural county with many remote premises,- “As a result, deploying broadband is a particular challenge.”

99.54 percent of Logica’s shareholders have backed a takeover bid from CGI of £1.05 per share.

The deal is expected to be worth in the region of £1.7 billion and makes speculation surrounding Logica’s interest in rival-bidders unlikely.

The deal had come under scrutiny from within the analyst community who were sceptical that CGI would be able to successfully integrate Logica’s European operations into the Canadian based company’s range of operations.

Anthony Miller, partner at analyst firm CGI said: “Logica shareholders did not seem to have any second thoughts about accepting CGI’s 105 pence a share offer”.

Alstom have selected CSC to tend a five year contract to provide storage transformation and infrastructure services.

Alstom is a global engineering firm, deployed in over 50 countries and CSC will be involved in providing server and storage capabilities throughout these locations.

CSC will deploy BizCloud, a private cloud service to consolidate and migrate Alstom’s datacentres. The private cloud platform can be hosted on Alstom’s premises in order to enhance security and allow for rapid support and direct access.

The development of new technologies including cloud services combined with economic pressures have increased the use of IT consultancies.

While the public sector and financial services continue to be the main users of IT consultancies, other sectors including transport and construction are now looking to these services according to the Management Consultancies Association (MCA).

Alan Leaman, CEO at the MCA, commented: “the demands of consumers and the ability of new technology to deliver better options for businesses mean that this is an important and growing market for management consultancy firms in the UK”.

Samsung has acquired a handset technology business from Cambridge based CSR for £200 million as well as a further £22 million investment in the firm.

The news of the acquisition have seen CSR’s shares rise by 40 percent. The handset technology business had been described by analysts as being detrimental to the parent business having been affected by various issues.

Samsung persuaded the deal in order to increase its technology portfolio as it looks to improve its Galaxy range of smart devices.

The Independent has reported that errors in IT systems at G4S have been responsible for staff shortages.

An insider revealed that the shortfall had been caused by an internal error within IT systems which led to a miscalculation regarding staff levels.

The exact cause of the IT failure has yet to be reported on, and had not been mentioned before the 14th July when the detail of staff shortages were revealed in full.

The Olympics media center looks set to turn into a cloud computing centre if iCITY one of the remaining two bidders is successful in its application for the site.

The building contains over 31,000 square metres of office space and includes such facilities as 1,300 internet ports with fibre optic cabling. The structure is highly connected and is in close proximity to Canary Wharf.

The announcement of the preferred bidder is expected to be announced within the next 24 hours with rumours of a ruling in iCITY’s favour.

Microsoft has released the public beta of Office 2013 on Monday and has now announced that it is turning attention to developing cloud-based Office 365.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, announced during a press conference, that the company is looking to release the next generation of Office software via a cloud based platform.

Office 365 is designed as a continually updated service in comparison to that of Office 2013, with different versions designed to offer different levels of accessibility for varying sizes of businesses.

The BBC have employed prestigious management consultancy McKinsey in order to identify cost-savings measures.

The move has attracted criticism from some within the BBC however with Robert Oxley, spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, saying: “The BBC can’t become reliant on costly consultants. Extensive use of them represents poor value for the licence fee.”

A BBC spokesman commented: “As specialists in analysing how large businesses operate, McKinsey are providing the BBC team with training in business analysis techniques together with project management skills so we can bring this in-house.”