Industry news

Apple has revealed in the release of second quarter earnings last week, that the icloud has reached over 125 million users.

The iCloud was launched back in October 2011 as a service to provide wireless backup and synchronisation of Apple products. The paid-for service has been used in increasing numbers as a platform for document and media storage as Apple seeks to increase customer satisfaction with the product.

Peter Oppenheimer, chief financial officer at Apple, said: “Customers are using all the features of iCloud, response has been terrific, feedback has been terrific.”

IT polices will need to adapt to the challenges and changes presented by the 2012 Olympics, from increased demands on IT infrastructure to outside factors such as travel.

Analyst group Forrester have advised that IT must be focus on social media as well as remote access in the run up to and arrival of the 2012 Olympics. Forrester also referred to the Beijing Olympics as an example of how social media must be harnessed in order to avoid disruption.

Andrew Rose, Forrester principal analyst, said: “The controls many firms will implement to mitigate the risks associated with the summer of 2012 will form a legacy that will remain for many years to come”.

Atos, the payment transaction service will collaborate with KBC to deliver electronics payment transactions for the bank insurance group and its clients until 2016.

The contract will see Atos provide processing of payment relating to transactions between cardholders and merchants.

Bart Guns, KBC Group Payments senior general manager, said: "With this contract, KBC is opting for the continuation of the services by a very robust and reliable supplier of transaction services and a partner who is constantly striving for innovation."

Amazon’s cloud (AWS) made $500 million from sales in the first quarter 2012. The cloud service has grown significantly year-on-year with 2012’s first quarter up by $189 million from the same time last year.

The Amazon cloud has proven to be the fastest rising area of business in the company, with growth accounting for 61 percent compared to areas such as media at 19 percent and electronic business at 43 percent.

Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon, said: “Hundreds of thousands of businesses are using AWS today. The US federal government has a cloud first strategy and over 100 US agencies are using AWS.”

2,217 employees at HSBC are to be made redundant as part of the companies measure to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

In total 3,167 jobs will go but the creation of new roles will mitigate the permanent loss in job numbers to 2,217. The move comes from an announcement last year, detailing that the company planned to reduce its workforce by 30,000 jobs by 2013. This new announcement of job cuts come on the back of 700 jobs losses announced in June 2011.

A spokesman from HSBC said: “We will now be working with the individuals concerned to help them find alternative roles either within the wider group structure, or outside the organisation.”

Technology research group Gartner have released a survey that demonstrates that Customer relationship management (CRM) software has become a top priority for CIOs. The survey placed CRM software as the eighth most important consideration for CIOs in 2012.

CRM software has had greater focus placed on its application and that of social media, as customer experience becomes a key consideration in times of shrinking IT budgets and increased competition.

Gartner vice-president Ed Thompson commented that "In 2012, CRM executives are faced with the challenge of taking ‘social' more seriously – not as ‘just another channel'. but as a whole new way of doing business."

David Brennan, chief executive at the pharmaceutical company announced his resignation hours before a shareholder meeting. AstraZeneca has been hit by losses from a limited pipeline of new drugs on the market after poor drug trials and heavy competition from rival firms.

First-quarter profits dropped 40 percent, well under market expectation in addition to future negative predictions on AstraZeneca’s profits for the year.

Mr Brennan said: "I have decided that now is the right time to step down and allow a new leader to take the reins."

The recruitment services firm, Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS), has transferred its IT services onto a Cloud based platform in order to cut costs by 25 percent.

The recruitment firm employed Moldavian and Romanian based Endava to provide a cost reducing programme, while focusing on increasing the quality of services provided, which led to the Eastern European firm promoting Cloud based hosting.

John Wainwright, head of global IT at AMS, said: "We now receive service levels that deliver over 80% service call resolution at first point of support."

The government has announced £70 billion in potential public sector contracts for the next five years. The contracts cover multiple sectors including property, medical, emergency services and ICT with a potential £1.7 billion in contracts.

In publishing the potential contracts, the Government hopes to avoid investment gaps while promoting competitive bidding for new business. The G-Cloud is expected to receive £250 million of the potential investment.

Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, said today: "Frankly, we’ve been too short-term in how we’ve done procurement in the past. Our key competitors in Europe already see procurement as an integral part of a proper industrial strategy

Cloud computing firm, Salesforce, has unveiled the Government Cloud for the US. The company hope that the new software will accelerate government’s transformation for the social era.

The Government Cloud will include a dedicated, multi-tenant instance of Salesforce’s cloud infrastructure that will allow U.S. federal, state, and local agencies to rapidly deploy the latest social and mobile technologies in compliance with US legislation. The Government Cloud also includes AppExchange for Government, a new app marketplace for the public sector where government agencies can find, try and deploy cloud apps that meet their needs.

Additionally, the Government Cloud includes the Salesforce Government Partner Accelerator Program, which will train an army of 1,000 integrators by the end of 2012 to rapidly transform government IT with Salesforce.

“The bureaucracy of legacy government IT is preventing agencies from embracing innovative technologies that deliver immediate value,” said Vivek Kundra, executive vice president, emerging markets, salesforce.com. “We must end the era where government spends millions of dollars and waits years for IT projects that never work. Now, salesforce.com offers a solution the government needs to break down barriers to innovation and eliminate wasteful IT spending.”