Industry news

The first few months of 2012 have seen an increase in the demand for outsourcing, with Morrison & Foerster’s outsourcing practice reporting a 20% increase in outsourcing activity.

Alistair Maughan, partner at Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) attributes this rise in activity to a drive for growth by Financial Services Companies. Companies are tending to use multiple suppliers as opposed to singular suppliers to allow room to negotiate more competitive deals. Maughan also noted an increased interest in outsourcing from property and pharmaceutical companies.

Maughan estimates that this increased interest will hold outsourcing in the buyer’s market for six to twelve months; however, Government plans to hive public sector IT into mutual companies could absorb capacity in the market and result in higher prices.

The pharmaceuticals giant selects the Indian outsourcer's platform for marketing content, developed in partnership with a division of marketing giant WPP.

The ‘Digital Marketing Platform’ developed by Infosys in partnership with Fabric Worldwide (a division of advertising and marketing services group WPP) is designed to enable users to manage their online marketing process from beginning to end and monitor and analyse their success.

Phil Benton, GSK' vice president for the new division says “we recognise that our customers, consumers and other external stakeholders increasingly want to engage with us on-line […] Global Digital Services will enable us to provide globally standard processes, scalable assets and advanced analytics to support better and more efficient engagement with these external audiences."

London’s second largest airport plans a £73m IT operations overhaul which will include hosting, telephony and management of end-user computing.

There will be 11 lots available for suppliers to bid on which are outlined on an online tender, with each lasting for a period of 4 years. The most expensive of these being valued at £12m covers hosting, management, support and maintenance. This section of the airport’s current framework has more than 900 servers, based on a virtualised Unix and Wintel estate, as well as over 200 storage devices.

Gatwick is also considering cloud-based services to handle its web services, including their website, intranet and extranet.

The £20 billion guarantee scheme to increase the flow of credit to SMEs is to be approved this week by EU regulators.

The proposal for the National Loan Guarantee Scheme unveiled by Chancellor George Osborne in November aims to provide government guarantees for bank’s funding in an effort to cut the cost of borrowing for companies.

The European Commission has been assessing the plan to ensure that in falls in line with EU state aid rules. According to a source approval from the European Commission is imminent and will come in the next few days.

Capita has unveiled details of their £440m deal with the armed forces under which it will work with the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force on its Recruiting Partnering Project (RPP).

The forces stand to save and estimated £300m with the 10 year deal, and hope to release 1,000 military recruiters back to the front line. Ownership of the recruitment policy, entry criteria and assessment standards will remain with the Forces, but the RPP will handle the process of attracting and recruitment of new soldiers and officers.

As part of this plan an ICT platform will be provided by Capita, although they will continue to work in an assisting role with the existing model until March 2013 when the new delivery model will be executed.

SAP, the market leader in creating business management applications, has confirmed that over the next 4 years it will invest an additional $450 million to increase its leading position in the Middle East and North Africa.

SAP intends to increase its workforce in the region from 300 employees to 800 as well as setting up a training institute to certify 2,000 software consultants. SAP said that these measures are designed to lead to a significant increase in sales in the region.

Werner Brandt, Chief Financial Officer, said the region is: “is remarkable in its growth potential, scope and readiness to innovate - additional investment will enable us to deliver leading-edge innovation, better localization and more talent.”

Thameslink has awarded a £120 million contract to upgrade infrastructure to Carillion. Carillion will service lines and deports as part of the Thameslink Programme in preparation for the delivery of new 12 car trains.

The longer trains are set to serve increased demand and improve the timetable of the service to the north and south of the capital.

Richard Hoswon, Chief executive of Carillion, said: "We will continue to work closely with Network Rail and the train operators to maximise value for money in delivering this important new phase of the Thameslink project."

BT has been chosen by Australia's Financial and Energy Exchange Group (FEX) to provide its Radianz Cloud software for financial services, giving global market participants greater flexibility in accessing the FEX exchange.

The BT Radianz cloud services have been created to suit the global financial community in providing stability and speed of service.

Thomas Price, FEX CEO, said: "BT leads the way in providing financial services cloud connectivity. They help us extend our global reach and gain greater access to the community that we need to attract new clients and grow our business."

O2 is set to deliver Wifi hotspots to 1,600 pubs and restaurants around the UK in a 3 year contract to provide free wireless to 13 brands belonging to Mitchells & Butlers.

The O2 Wifi will be accessible and free regardless of the guests’ mobile and broadband providers. The hotspots will be rolled out initially to 199 Harvester restaurants, with complete coverage of all Mitchells & Butlers brands by October.

Robin Young, Operations Director at Mitchells & Butlers, said: "Our three-year technology journey is reaching that exciting stage where, following the deployment of a new flexible cloud-based infrastructure with our partner Fujitsu, we can start to deploy some really guest-focused services.”

Youku and Tudou are merging together in a deal worth over £1 billion in order to cut costs and increase profitability in a struggling industry caused by rising costs.

The joining of the two video streaming companies, imaginatively named Youku Tudou, will create an industry leader with more than one thirds of the online video market. Pre-market trading this Monday saw Tudou stocks rise by more than double.

The once bitter rivals had both reported net losses last year in an overly competitive marketplace hit by both rising bandwidth and content costs. Independent analyst, Bill Bishop, said: “This creates China's biggest video site, but it doesn't create a YouTube – they still have less than 50% market share."