Industry news

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.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is hoping to save over £100 million through a new shared services system, according to Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke.

The news comes following previous criticism of the MoJ’s £14 million per annum spend on implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, a huge figure compared to the Department of Health (DH), that declared a spend of only £1.4 million per year on ERP.

The MoJ’s comparatively high spend is borne out of having three separate ERP systems from the prison, probation and court agencies. The three systems are set to be replaced in 2013 by a single shared service and the move is expected to save £102 million over ten years in costs.

However, the introduction of the new system is also expected to make huge ‘real’ savings in efficiencies. Clarke said “The new solution will deliver significant savings of £40m per annum through increased efficiency, reduced systems maintenance and support and improved management information. These benefits are quoted excluding any sharing of our platform by other departments and will increase should this occur.”

Global business outsourcing partner arvato, has expanded its Supply Chain Solutions leadership team with the appointment of Joe Fogg as UK Business Development Director.

Joe Fogg has over twenty years’ experience in the supply chain sector, gained during business development and management positions at DHL, TNT Express Worldwide, and most recently at Norbert Dentressangle. During that time, Fogg developed large turnkey and end to end solutions for leading international brands.

Based in the UK, Fogg will focus on developing arvato’s existing supply chain relationships and generating new business in core growth markets such as technology, telecommunications and healthcare/beauty as well as e-commerce fulfilment. The company has recently won new contracts for clients including Bosch Power Tools UK, and has expanded several of its client relationships, including Sony Music UK and Universal Music UK to roll out e-commerce fulfilment solutions.

Markus Schmücker, Managing Director, Supply Chain Solutions at arvato, said: “Joe’s appointment strongly supports our business development strategy. He has an extremely impressive track record in the industry – his insight and expertise complement our strong heritage and will enable us to accelerate our growth in the supply chain market. I look forward to working closely with Joe to develop our business.”

The government has pledged £100,000 to the Council of Europe's Global Project on Cybercrime.

The funding was announced by foreign secretary William Hague and forms part of the nation's commitment to help tackle cyber crime.

William Hague said: "At the London Conference on Cyberspace I made clear that the rapid rise of cyber crime is a growing threat to people across the world and the need for co-ordinated response to improve security, enhance co-operation between states and ensure a collective undertaking to address this threat."

"I am therefore delighted the UK will be supporting the Council of Europe Global Project on Cybercrime. This will bring real benefits - including by working together with entrepreneurs and companies whose innovation is as crucial to the future as it has been to our past."

Senior police officers have strongly defended the radical extension of the role of private companies in policing, saying they should be involved in protecting the public and bringing offenders to justice.

The comments from the Association of Chief Police Officers follow the disclosure by the Guardian that the West Midlands and Surrey police authorities have invited private security companies to bid for a wide range of services, including criminal investigations, patrolling neighbourhoods and detaining suspects.

ZTE Corporation, a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, has announced the company will deliver the next stage of the LTE infrastructure network rollout for operator Hi3G in Sweden as it builds out the industry’s first LTE TDD/FDD dual-mode network.

ZTE has delivered and installed the first stage of the network since it was first announced in March, 2011. This was the world's first commercial network of green dual-mode LTE base stations.

For the contract extension, ZTE will deliver the SDR-based infrastructure equipment to upgrade the operator's 3G network in Sweden.

CA Technologies has announced that Simula Research Laboratory will standardise on the CA AppLogic® turnkey cloud platform to accelerate and streamline the deployment of cloud services.

The Norwegian state-owned research organisation will use the platform to enable research staff to quickly and easily deploy scalable Web applications with minimal intervention from IT staff. This approach to CA Technologies Business Service Innovation will help Simula drive faster, more efficient basic and long-term research in the fields of networks and distributed systems, scientific computing, and software engineering.

“The CA AppLogic cloud platform will allow Simula to provision and deploy research-based applications in hours instead of days,” says Gunnar Carelius, IT manager, Simula. “Previously, the IT team devoted a large amount of time and resources to configuring servers and infrastructure at the request of researchers, in support of their individual research applications. Using the CA AppLogic platform, the researchers will have self-service access to cloud computing resources, core computing power, storage, operating systems, and applications. This will help ensure that underlying technology does not delay Simula’s research programs.”

Alder Hey Children's and Liverpool Women's NHS foundation trusts are in the process of planning what could be a first between NHS Trusts: a major IT outsourcing contract.

The two trusts already share IT services and a CIO. They are looking for a supplier to provide ICT technology for the new Children's Health Park hospital, due to open in 2014.

The intent is to engage a single supplier, for an initial seven years but with a possible three year extension. The estimated deal value is £31.5m.

Over 120,000 people have downloaded Barclays Bank’s Pingit mobile banking app.

Barclays current account holders can make payments worth between £1 and £300 to people in their mobile contact list. Payments clear in seconds.

The app is hosted in a private cloud that plugs straight into the core IT infrastructure.

DWP is set to be be the first government department to action the latest Cabinet Office identity assurance guidelines, with universal credit and personal independent payments to be the first affected.

The framework has been issued in support of the government’s ‘digital by default’ policy. The plan will see all major departments adopt identity assurance plans, for users accessing government services.