Industry news

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has suspended funding for a training programme for offshore Filipino nationals. The trainees were educated to work in English speaking call centres.

The scheme has drawn heavy criticism since it was reported last week, as it was seen as a threat to American call centre workers.

After several congressmen expressed their outrage at the scheme, the funding has been pulled.

“In response to the concerns you have raised, the Agency is suspending its participation in the English language training project in Mindanao pending further review of the facts,” said USAID deputy assistant administrator Barbara Feinstein, in a letter Monday to Congressman Tim Bishop.

The letter continued: “Furthermore, the Agency has established a high-level taskforce to review these matters.”

The US government have removed IT giant Oracle from a list of approved public-sector vendors. Oracle will no longer receive invitations to tender for public sector contracts. The news follows a legal dispute in which Oracle has been accused of overcharging.

The news will come as a blow to Oracle, as the General Services Administration have now cancelled the GSA IT Schedule 70 programme, which provided the IT firm with $388 million of business in 2011.

The move follows a high profile legal battle between Oracle and the US government in which Oracle agreed to pay a settlement of $199.5 million in compensation.

The bar will come in to effect from May this year, although Oracle will continue to receive upkeep fees for the public sector infrastructure they have already provided.

The GSA has issued a statement in which it said that working with Oracle "was not in the best interests of the government".

Fujitsu has announced it will release a new set of software tools designed for the analaysis and processing of big data.

The IT giant announced on Monday that the server software will be developed with the aims of being able to handle large, varied file systems, quickly scanning huge amounts of data, and quickly storing and reading information from databases. Fujitsu will also be developing dedicated hardware for the software and will launch at the end of next March.

At a press conference Kazuo Iamad said: "We're just starting from scratch, but eventually we'd like to achieve ¥100 billion (US$1.23 billion) in annual sales in this business."

Capita has announced plans to raise £290 million for new acquisitions and will place 40 million new shares on the stock exchange.

The outsourcers have already spent £90 million this year purchasing smaller rivals, hoping that the acquisitions will offer new opportunities abroad, as budget cuts in the UK continue to take their toll.

Capita said: “The board had expected acquisition activity to reduce during 2012. However, in assessing the pipeline of potential opportunities since the preliminary results, the board has concluded that the acquisition environment continues to offer a rare opportunity to broaden the business.”

Capita currently administer council tax for around a third of Britain’s homes, and achieved a 14% return on investments over the past four years.

Vodafone will purchase Cable & Wireless Plc for 38 pence a share in a deal that has been promoted by the directors of Cable & Wireless.

The acquisition of Cable & Wireless will provide Vodafone with an additional mobile fixed-line network as well as increasing Vodafone’s business users. At present the main shareholder, Orbis Holdings Ltd, have yet to agree on the terms of the purchase.

The agreement came about as Tata Communications (TCOM) pulled out of the bidding for Cable & Wireless after failing to settle on a price. Vodafone Chief Executive Officer Vittorio Colao, said “The acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide creates a leading integrated player in the enterprise segment of the U.K.”

A suppliers list for the public sector document management service contracts, awarded at the start of the month, has been released by the Cabinet Office.

The list includes preferred suppliers such as Capita, TNT, and RemployLPS, to deliver the document management framework that has been created to provide government departments with electronic storage of media, as well as the transportation and management of physical documentation.

The framework will cover public sectors including the NHS, local government, educational institutions, emergency services and housing.

The Information Services Group’s (ISG) expect that UK outsourcing will increase in the second half of 2012 after the strongest results in decade in 2011.

While the start of 2012 saw a reduction in outsourcing contacts from 2011 due to the unusually high figures of last year and from the delayed effects of the Eurozone crisis, outsourcing is expected to rise as uncertainty dissipates.

ISG, said “we expect outsourcing activity and total contract value to pick up in the second half of 2012 and project full-year results to be in line with historical norms.”

CSC is planning a further 640 UK redundancies which brings the total number of job losses to 1,100 this year, say Unite.

Unite have said they are disgusted with comments from the NOA who stated that, as a private company, CSC should be able to conduct their business as they see fit.

National Outsourcing Association Chairman Martyn Hart says: “If CSC were to offer voluntary redundancies, it would be the people it really wanted to keep who’d be first out of the door. The IT industry is experiencing major skill shortages, and genuine talent is in demand. The people volunteering for redundancies are most likely the ones who could quickly walk into a lucrative job elsewhere, the cobalt coders and suchlike.

“CSC simply cannot afford to lose all of its best talent as it goes through this transitional phase. Although so closely associated with the public sector, CSC is a private company which, in the face of adversity, should be able to choose how to reorganise its workforce as it sees fit.”

AstraZeneca is set to buy Ardea Biosciences Inc in a $1.26 billion acquisition of the drug treatment firm specialising in gout and cancer.

The move will see AstraZeneca, the U.K.’s second largest drugmaker bolstered by the purchase of Ardea . The move will bring new treatments to a company that has suffered recent setbacks in product development and from facing strong completion from rival firms.

Barry D. Quart, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ardea, said “From our earliest interactions, we were impressed with the quality of AstraZeneca's people and we are confident their commercial strength and global reach will help realise the full potential of our programmes.”

CSC’s success in winning the Ministry of Defence contract to provide back office services has been met with threats of industrial action from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).

The decision by the MoD to select CSC as the preferred bidder based on the companies’ ability to meet the obligations of the contract as the lowest bidder has led to worries that the cost savings will be achieved through reducing staffing costs.

PCS has raised the possibility of industrial action at the expected job losses from the implementation of CSC’s cost saving strategy. The union has said that it plans to hold meeting over the coming weeks and have said that “industrial action cannot be ruled out at this stage.”