Industry news

BT will manage Standard Life’s comms infrastructure, including a BT Connect LAN and WAN as well as IP Telephony and contact centres. We will also manage the transition of the infrastructure to BT’s IP Connect network.

The arrangement supports Standard Life’s need for an integrated voice and data platform across its international operations, providing network services to its 16 UK and 10 offshore offices, including Chennai, Hong Kong, Hyderabad Aida, Pune and Sydney.

Headquartered in Edinburgh, Standard Life has assets of more than £190 billion and 6 million customers worldwide.

Paul Chong, Standard Life’s Group IT and Commercial Director, said:“BT understands our infrastructure and has vast experience in delivering complex domestic and international networking and outsourcing services. This network transformation will enable us to provide the highest standards of service to our customers, delivering on our commitment to provide them with a seamless global service.”

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) makes first purchase from the government's recently launched G-Cloud Store.

The organisation used it to buy Agile educational software that is designed to reduce waste and avoid project failures. The MCA confirmed it will use this to help run its Future Coastguard Programme.

HSBC will sell its general insurance businesses to French insurer AXA Group and Australia's QBE Insurance Group for $914 million in cash, as Europe's biggest bank moves ahead with its plan to divest non-core assets.

HSBC's decision to exit the business could be a precursor to similar deals as lenders globally consider selling capital-intensive businesses as reserve requirements become more strict.

Somerset county council is to bring a number of services currently provided by the Southwest One joint venture, including accounting, business development and pensions, back in-house.

Southwest One was set up in 2007 as a joint venture company between the council, Taunton Deane borough council, Avon and Somerset police and IBM to modernise the local authorities' business processes.

Ken Maddock, leader of Somerset council, said: "We have bent over backwards to try to make this partnership work. But we have to state clearly that our primary duty in looking after the public's hard earned money is to make sure we get the best possible deals, that we get the best possible value for the public's money."

Chris O’Malley, CEO, Nimsoft outlines the considerations that should be made when considering a move to the Cloud.

Formalise communications, roles, service definitions and processes. The saying “Good fences make good neighbours” is very applicable to relationships with Cloud service providers.

Clear demarcation of services, roles and responsibilities is vital to these relationships. The more that’s left to subjective opinion, conjecture and guesswork, the more likely it is that misunderstandings, mistakes and missed opportunities will result.

Good “fences” for the Cloud are built by asking the right questions: Which services are ‘core’ and which are ‘chore’? Which will be off-loaded to a Cloud partner and which will remain in-house? What has front-line responsibility in the event of a problem? Who is the next contact in line if that person isn’t available?

Detailed process documentation, well-defined roles and clear accountability are all essential for managing an increasingly disparate IT infrastructure; one that includes partnerships with Cloud services providers.

This, by the way, is one factor that differentiates today’s high-value Cloud engagements from the less successful outsourcing engagement of the past. With the Cloud, IT can tightly focus what it off-loads and what its service-levels expectations are. So it can actually gain control, rather than losing it.

Start with concrete IT service requirements and definitions

Service level agreements cannot be standardised. Performance that is acceptable for one service will not be for another. And there cannot be grey areas. Everyone must understand the performance target.

This is why it is so important to have watertight service contracts in place―ones that detail deliverables and potential penalties―thus ensuring there can be no questions or misunderstandings in the event of service disruption. It is essential to detail what constitutes acceptable up-time. And if an outage is reported, it must be clear how quickly it is to be addressed.

One good way to set thresholds for Cloud service providers is to use benchmarks based on service levels historically achieved by the internal IT organisation.

Other considerations when creating SLAs include:

1. Penalties - What service credits or compensation will be honoured if SLAs are missed?

2. Realism - Can 99.999% reliability actually be guaranteed by the service provider? Does the business really need to bear the cost of premium reliability for every service?

3. Accountability – Service Providers’ claims about service levels should be validated against reports of problems from end-users.

4. Alignment with business requirements - Different departments, for example may require different service levels.

Stipulate on-demand service status updates

Irrespective of the SLAs, or any other service agreements that are in place, it is vital that the business has 24 by 7 visibility into the performance status of its Cloud services. The sooner the business is aware of an issue, the better it will be able to mitigate its impact on end-users and customers.

Many established Cloud service providers offer their clients online portals that provide access to real-time data on the performance and status of their managed infrastructure and services. Some also provide automated reporting and alerts. This transparency gives customers a higher level of confidence that business needs and SLAs are being met.

How should an organisation manage its Cloud services?

The use of Cloud service providers does not eliminate the need for businesses to monitor the performance and availability of critical services. On the contrary, it is still important to identify problems and hold service providers accountable.

So rather than relying exclusively on the monitoring and reporting offered by each Cloud service provider, it is advisable to implement a comprehensive solution for monitoring any and all externally provided services. Such a solution will help ensure the success of Cloud computing initiatives by measuring all key services and applications in real-time.

Ideally, this monitoring solution should unify the entire operational IT infrastructure, bringing both internally and externally provisioned services under the umbrella of a single IT monitoring and management process. This unified approach is the most cost-effective way to ensure that all IT services are meeting the needs of the business in terms of performance and availability.

Undeniably the UK has one of the most complex payroll systems in the world. However, over the next 18 months, we will see some of the most fundamental changes to the reporting regime behind PAYE since its inception in 1944. Real Time Information (RTI) is being introduced by HMRC to provide more accurate and up-to-date information on employees and pensioners, in a move that will shift the PAYE reporting requirement from annual to monthly updates.

Not only will this support the introduction of Universal Credits, it will serve to fundamentally improve the overall operation of PAYE. By increasing the regularity of reporting, it enables HMRC to respond more efficiently to errors that lead to the under- or over-payment of tax.

With such a shake-up to the industry however, it comes as no surprise that there are some question marks about what RTI will actually mean for employers, and what needs to be done in preparation for the new process. All businesses, regardless of size or sector, will be affected by the introduction of RTI and HMRC is encouraging employers to ensure their payroll data is accurate before the change is implemented. This involves exercising due diligence to ensure details such as DOB, National Insurance numbers & names held on the company database are correct.

At Sage we recently conducted a survey among our customers to find out whether employers were aware of RTI and discovered that 63% of companies were aware of the change, an improvement on only 26% that knew last year. Although there has been an evident shift in the right direction, there is still quite a way to go before Britain is ready for RTI. This move represents a significant change to firms’ reporting regime and, to adjust to it, businesses will need to take the time to work with their payroll provider to validate their data, in order to ensure a smooth transition. The advantages of RTI, such as efficiency, savings, improved accuracy and elimination of fraud, will far outweigh the initial work to make your data more accurate.

If you’re confused about what RTI means for you and how you can best prepare for it, our advice is to contact your payroll provider and ask how RTI will impact your business, and what to do to ensure the data you submit is correct. Sage is working closely with HMRC to support its customers through this transition into the RTI world, by being involved in the pilot scheme that begins in April 2012. We are encouraging all our customers to get ready for RTI early, and a significant number of our customers – from SMEs with no payroll department through to large employers – are participating in the pilots to ensure the transition runs even more smoothly.

The task of simplifying the PAYE system is unquestionably a vast one, and whilst most software providers and payroll bureaux are ready for the changes, as an employer, you must start reviewing your current HR and payroll processes so that you will have all of the information to make your FPS (Full Payment Submission) each month.

The results of a study carried out by Microsoft, in conjunction with IDC, show that a potential 14 million jobs worldwide could be created by 2015 as a direct result of spending on public and private cloud IT services. This is in addition to a saving of $1.1 trillion a year.

According to Microsoft, the new jobs will be shared between SMEs of 500 employees or fewer and larger businesses, with the SMEs narrowly taking the majority. The report states that just under half (6.75 million) of the 14 million new jobs are expected to be held in China and India, as companies in this region will not suffer from “legacy drag” and because of the extensive workforce available. John Gantz, senior vice president at IDC supported the claims of the report by saying: "we tend to think of China and India as emerging markets, but they're actually early adopters of the cloud. They're not bound to existing systems. They've skipped that step, so there's less holding them back."

IDC calculated the number of cloud-generated jobs by weighing several factors, including available country workforce, unemployment rates, GDP, IT spend by industry and company size, industry mix by country and city, technology infrastructure by country and city, regulatory environment, and other factors.

The impact of this study could prove to be instrumental in transforming customers’ attitude towards cloud computing for their businesses, and cementing it as not only a viable option but a necessary element to fuel growth for businesses.

Following the results of a BPO research study in conjunction with Everest Group and LSE’s Outsourcing Unit, Accenture is encouraging BPOs to modernise their mindset towards industry demands, in order to reap greater business value from their relationships.

The research showed that the most successful BPOs demonstrated 8 key practices of management: a holistic approach to relationship management, a cooperative approach to governance, change management a priority, placing emphasis on benefits beyond cost reduction, targeting strategic business outcomes, domain expertise and analytics, aligning the organisation with the outsourced processes and taking full advantage of technology as an enabler.

Mike Salvino, Group Chief Executive, BPO, at Accenture said “this study clearly shows that the industry mindset needs to change for organisations to capture the full business value of BPO, where engagements are measured by business outcomes and improving clients’ business performance rather than just cost reduction (…) by adopting the behaviours and practices associated with high performance BPO, organisations can capture significantly greater business value and build new competitive strengths, ranging from accelerated speed to market, enhanced innovation and stronger customer loyalty to savvier talent management, and top-line growth.”

CSC has announced that it has signed a non-binding Letter of Intent with the UK Department of Health, which lays out CSC’s path in delivering services and solutions to meet the NHS reform agenda, services will be focused primarily in the Midlands, North and East England.

The signing reflects the focus of the NHS’ reform agenda to deliver more localised projects while implementing budgetary controls and greater devolution in decision processes and at the same time meeting high quality standards and improving overall patient care.

The Letter of Intent is intended to establish the broad principles of an agreement between the CSC and the Department of Health, with the agreement set to be completed by the 31st of March 2012.

New technology has allowed JP Morgan Chase to increase the use of low cost sites by 14 percent. Mike Cavanagh, CEO of Treasury & Securities Services at JP Morgan Chase, has said that an IT overhaul has allowed the bank to “optimise the location strategy” of staff, increasing the use of low cost sites from 26 to 40 percent.

The financial giant has been working to upgrade key technology which has seen many legacy systems removed, increases in automation and better virtualisation. These upgrades come as part of JP Morgan’s commitment to an IT overhaul looking to improve business processes, product development and cut trading costs following a new commitment to global trading and cross asset servicing platforms.

With nearly a third of all 25,000 employees working in IT, JP Morgan is set to experience huge savings.