Industry news

The Bank of England (BoE) is preparing to deploy a risk assessment IT system by the end of 2012 in order to identify risks in the financial sector.

The new system is expect to cost near £2.5 million and would provide BoE with scores categorising companies operating in the finance sector.

Those accepting the tender will be reviewed by both the BoE and FSA with the winner receiving a three year contract with the option of extension.

General Motors (GM) are looking at moving outsourced projects in-house according to reports.

GM has past history in carrying out large scale outsourcing in areas including IT services with over 90 percent of projects outsourced.

Martyn Hart, Chairman of the National Outsourcing Association, commented: "These services are arranged according to outsourcing principles. This internal company will have the governance models, SLAs and relationship management procedures that an outsourcing deal has. The only thing missing is the contract."

For the fifth year running Accenture have been named best outsourcing provider according to rankings run by the IAOP.

The rankings which detail the top 100 outsourcing providers included Infosys at second place while Wipro, Capgemini, and CSC all featured in the top ten. Rankings for best outsourcing advisor were also released which saw KPMG take the top spot.

The rankings also revealed that the outsourcing market had increased by six percent in 2012 with a average revenue for providers featured in the top 100 growing to $1.6 billion.

Salesforce.com have announced that they have acquired the Canadian based GoInstant which specialises in shared-browsing .

GoInstant provides shared-browsing for customers which runs via browsers without the need for add-ons and can be used by support and sales teams. The acquisition comes on the back of a recent splurge of SME buy-outs by the database giant.

Marcel LeBrun, senior vice president, Salesforce.com, said: "We believe there is tremendous potential for social enterprises to benefit from what the GoInstant has built, particularly when combined with salesforce.com's industry-leading social, mobile, and open apps and technology".

Free mobile broadband is being offered through the Three network if users watch video adverts.

Users have to purchase a SIM for a small charge and are then able to use mobile broadband through credit from watching adverts. Currently 2.5 minutes of adverts seen equates to 500mb of free data usage.

The service is being offered by Samba who stipulate that website visits may be tracked with such information often proving useful to marketing firms.

Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust has employed Big Data analytics and intelligence in order to gain greater insight.

The increased insight has allowed the Trust to reduce numbers of appointments that are missed by people as well as using analytics to move focus on to areas of concern.

Michael Meers, CIO of Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, commented: “MedeAnalytics provided the opportunity to move away from spreadsheet-based reporting to a web-based platform that was more flexible, easier to use and had more scope for expansion.”

Boeing has announced an order valued at £4.6 billion from Air Lease Corporation (ALC) at Farnborough air show.

The order consists of 75 737 Max short-haul jets which takes the total order of 737 jets to 539 which still lags behind orders for Airbus A320neo orders.

Airbus currently outperforms Boeing with over 1,300 orders for the new A320 however the company is expected to close the lead with multiple potential buyers of new craft in 2012.

BMW is to invest £250 million in its UK factories in order to increase Mini production. The factories are located in Birmingham, Swindon and Oxford.

The production of the mini for BMW employs over 5000 workers and comes as the company looks to extend its international growth strategy.

BMW however suggested that the current capacity restraints of the Oxford plant was forcing BMW to consider "satellite production" of the Mini outside of the UK.

Northumberland County Council has signed a 5 year deal with BT Global Services which will see the extension of the provision of NorthNet, a shared services platform for IT public sector services.

The service is expected to provide schools in the catchment area with increased internet speeds. The council has commented that the partnership with BT has already generated upwards of £860,000 in savings.

Networks and data manager at Northumberland County Council, David McDonnell, commented: “We are ensuring our rural locations in the county have access to fast internet speeds, Wooler library has just gone live with more areas to follow.”

Telefónica who owns O2 have secured a deal with companies including Google, Microsoft, RIM and Facebook which will provide customers with the ability to use their mobile devices to make digital payments.

The new system will allow users to carry out digital transactions including the purchasing of apps and charging payments directly to customers phone bill and effectively removing the need for a debit card.

The service is already being employed with over 400,000 customers in Germany already employing the Direct to Bill feature per month.