Industry news

The largest maker of business-management software, SAP AG, plans to spend approximately $500 million to encourage customers to its Hana data-processing product, and ramp up the competition against Oracle Corp.

$337 million has been budgeted by SAP to provide new clients of its Hana database platform with consulting services and an 18-month refund policy. The Walldorf, Germany-based company is also starting a $155 million venture fund to spur development of applications compatible with Hana.

Vishal Sikka, an SAP board member in charge of technology and innovation, said yesterday “with Hana, we have an opportunity to really transform the database and rethink applications.”

Sophos has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Dialogs Software, a mobile device management vendor based in Germany.

This is not the first partnership between the companies; Dortmund-based Dialogs' smartMan mobile device management technology is already powering Sophos' Mobile Control product.

The management of mobile devices, particularly those owned by employees and used in corporate environments, was a key topic for discussion at this year's RSA security conference in San Francisco.

Sophos plans to merge Dialogs' smartMan technology, which supports all types of mobile devices and operating systems including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian, into a Unified Threat Management suite which will also include its own mobile security and encryption products.

In a bid to slash on-going costs of £30 million London's councils are considering pooling their administration for pensions.

Some 32 boroughs, alongside the City of London Corporation and the London Pensions Fund Authority, could see their processing costs fall "sharply", it has been proposed.

London Councils, an umbrella group pushing for the changes, said “there was a commitment to explore further the proposals for the creation of a London Pensions Mutual, as a pan-London investment fund."

The councils have also estimated that by combining the funds invested, they will be able to better co-ordinate and direct up to £2.25 billion funds into local infrastructure projects.

"Each scheme has separate advisers, administrators, fund managers with their performance fees – if councils work together that cost can be steeply cut," said Sir Merrick Cockell, chair of the Local Government Association.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. has annouced the evacuation of staff from two of its software development centers around Chennai in southern India, after authorities issued a tsunami warning following a massive earthquake off the coast of Sumatra.

"As a measure of extreme caution, we have evacuated all our employees from two of our large facilities around Chennai," India's largest software exporter by sales said in a statement.

It wasn't immediately known how many employees it has in the two facilities.

Hewlett Packard is set to move in to the cloud computing market. The new tool will put HP in competition with Amazon as well as other businesses.

HP planned to launch the public cloud service May 10th and will incorporate a variety of computing tasks. The service will also include software tools that businesses and other companies can use to build and run programs, and even transfer programs from to HP's data centres.

The move is part of CEO Meg Whitman’s strategy to take advantage of the cloud computing trend, as businesses and consumers are increasingly storing and accessing data and services over the Internet.

“The market for public cloud is large and will continue to grow,” Hewlett-Packard Chief Strategy Officer Bill Veghte said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg.

Maxwell, Director of ICT Futures at the Cabinet Office, will take up the role following the departure of Bill McCluggage last November.

Maxwell will continue in his current role while reporting to government CIO Andy Nelson with his new responsibilities.

Nelson said: "I am delighted that Liam Maxwell will be taking on the role of deputy government chief information officer, this is an important step in delivering ICT services that are fit for a modern civil service. Liam has a strong track record of delivering success in government ICT and he also brings significant experience of turning the theory into practice."

An Oxford University graduate, Maxwell joined the Cabinet Office in July 2011. Previously, he was head of computing at Eton College for nearly seven years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Facebook is set to acquire popular photo app Instagram for around $1 billion (£630 million). The purchase will be made using both cash and stock and Facebook has said it will allow Instagram to grow independently.

The Instagram app is free and allows users to apply different special effects to their photos before they are uploaded. Proving hugely popular, the firm says that it has more than 30 million users uploading more than 5 million new pictures every day.

Announcing the deal on his Facebook Timeline, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook."

He added: "This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all."

Sony is set to cut 10,000 jobs globally, according to Japanese business paper Nikkei. The electronics firm will lose 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan under new president Kazuo Hirai.

The job cuts are likely to be widespread, affecting development, manufacturing and management. Previously, cuts have come as part of the selling or consolidation of factories.

Sony is moving to refocus on its principal consumer electronics businesses, such as smartphones and tablets, after estimated losses of $2.7 billion during the fiscal year that ended in March. The electronics giant has struggled to compete in crucial areas, such as TVs, making massive losses even as rivals like Apple and Samsung have announced record profits. The establishment has also suffered from the strong yen and last year's massive earthquake in Japan.

Sony President Kazuo Hirai, who officially took his post last week, is set to address the media about his plans to turn the company around. A Sony spokesman said the company had no comment on the report.

Analyst firm Gartner has revised its forecast for worldwide IT spending in 2012. Government austerity measures mean that IT spending will increase by 2.5% this year, reaching a total of $3.7 trillion. The new prediction is well down from the original 3.7% increase that Gartner previously predicted.

According to Gartner, IT spending in the government sector is expected to "contract moderately" on a global basis in 2012 and 2013, driven by Eurozone austerity measures. US government spending is expected to be "flat" in 2012 before contracting in 2013.

In the SME market, which represents around a quarter of the enterprise IT market, spending is forecast to reach $874 billion in 2012 and will grow to $1 trillion by 2016. Throughout the forecast period, Gartner said midsized business IT spending will beat other sectors in each of the next five years, driven by progress in spending on enterprise software.

Gartner analyst Richard Gordon said: "Despite ongoing concerns about the global economic recovery – most notably around the resolution of eurozone sovereign-debt problems, worries about the potential for China's real estate 'bubble' to spill over and affect the rest of the economy, and rising oil prices – early signs in 2012 suggest that the global economic outlook has brightened a little."

British American Tobacco (BAT) has awarded a seven-year £132m contract to Deutsche Telekom’s IT subsidiary T-System. The cloud contract will help BAT support its 200-plus brands, including Dunhill, Pall Mall and Lucky Strike.

T-Systems will incorporate BAT’s SAP business software in to a Cloud system that will be accessible from 65 global markets by 2016.

Phil Colman, BAT CIO, said: "Our IT strategy focuses on a single portfolio of connected applications running on standardised technology to drive competitive advantage across the business. The T-Systems deal will help us to deliver that strategy."