Industry news

Parliamentary ICT - on behalf of the House of Commons and the House of Lords is seeking to put in place a framework for the provision of a Managed Service solution for its wired and wireless data and voice network encompassing the design, supply, installation, commissioning, maintenance, support and management.

The framework will encompass two Lots, with a single Supplier for each Lot, or a single Supplier for both Lots.

The tender reads: "The new network infrastructure must be resilient and have sufficient capacity to carry additional network traffic at a later date."

Ford Motor Company has announced plans to create and open its first dedicated research lab in Silicon Valley early this year, further growing the company's commitment to make technology affordable for millions.

Ford Research and Innovation, the company's advanced engineering arm, will open the new Silicon Valley lab in the first quarter, helping ensure Ford keeps pace with consumer trends and aggressively prepares for the future by developing mobility solutions to harness the power of seamless connectivity, cloud computing and clean technology.

"Ford has an incredible heritage of driving innovation in the transportation and manufacturing sectors during the past 107 years," said Paul Mascarenas, Ford chief technical officer and vice president of Research and Innovation. "Now it's time to prepare for the next 100 years, ushering in a new era of collaboration and finding new partners to help us transform what it means to be an automaker."

Cognizant, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, has announced it has been selected as a strategic partner by Telefónica UK, a leading communications company for consumers and businesses in the UK, to develop and manage the Company's online applications that are critical to improving sales and enhancing customer service.

Under the multiyear, managed services agreement, Cognizant will provide comprehensive business and operational support to Telefónica UK's online applications and enhance their agility, flexibility, and responsiveness to consumer demands and market changes. These applications perform a wide array of business-critical functions, ranging from promoting and providing access to Telefónica UK's products and services, to delivering end-user self-service functionalities.

Cognizant will leverage its deep understanding of Telefónica UK's business requirements and technology challenges to help the company keep its online systems operational and scalable, while providing rapid ongoing enhancements as required by the ever-broadening range of Telefónica UK's products and services. This will help Telefónica UK increase customer loyalty, expand customer base, drive innovation, maximize returns on IT investments, and boost competitiveness by balancing cost, complexity, and capacity.

"Cognizant is pleased to work with Telefónica UK in helping the company create operational efficiencies and increase market share," said Sanjiv Gossain, Senior Vice President and Global Practice Leader for Communications, Information, Media and Entertainment at Cognizant. "In a constantly changing communications marketplace characterized by a complex mix of consumer products and services, we are committed to driving excellence in Telefónica UK's operations through proactive and reactive applications outsourcing services, and improved accountability, efficiency, flexibility, and speed. This will help Telefónica UK achieve its business goals and set new standards in customer satisfaction."

"We selected Cognizant as our strategic partner because of its agile software development approach, leading communications industry knowledge, expertise in e-commerce technologies, and its proven delivery pedigree in IT application management services. Through this relationship, Telefónica UK will have access to Cognizant's global delivery network, industry leading practices, and innovation," said Brendan O'Rourke, Head of Online, Integration and Product Design, Telefónica UK. "Our online operations are business-critical and are key to differentiating our products and services in the most competitive mobile environment in the world. With Cognizant, we have developed an innovative and exciting strategic partnership that will allow us to continue to lead the market and accelerate our ability to differentiate our brand across all digital channels."

CA Technologies has announced that Lufthansa Cargo AG, one of the largest air freight carriers in the world, is implementing CA Clarity™ Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) to more quickly adapt to a changing business environment.

With 4,500 people employed, delivering more than 1.8 million tons of freight and mail to 300 destinations globally, Lufthansa Cargo AG depends on smooth workflows and logistics, not only in the area of transportation, but equally with regard to project management.

In order to meet these challenges, Lufthansa Cargo AG was looking for a holistic project and portfolio management (PPM) application that would unify and consolidate all project information in one place. The solution also needed to provide resource management so that Lufthansa Cargo AG could balance capacity with demand, financial management to capture costs and all project transactions, and portfolio management to ensure that strategic investments are aligned to corporate goals.

After an in depth evaluation process, it became clear that Lufthansa Cargo AG required all of these functionalities to be present in a single solution to provide consistent access to all of the data essential for informed decision making.

“CA Clarity PPM was chosen over other providers particularly on the strength of its plenitude of functionality, its high-quality configuration options, and its flexibility,” commented Wolfram Martin, Head of Controlling Cross Functions Lufthansa Cargo AG.

BT, in collaboration with Microsoft, has developed an enterprise-class platform to host dedicated Microsoft Lync Voice pilots in BT’s Irving, Texas Operations Center for US-centric customers.

BT unveiled the shared pilot platform at the Microsoft 2011 Worldwide Partner Conference, where BT was chosen by the Microsoft Voice field as 2011 Alliance Partner of the Year.

The pilot augments BT’s existing global Managed Lync services offering – part of the BT One portfolio offering. Each pilot instance can support up to 250 users, and offers a features-rich experience of this convergent technology including IM, presence, audio/web/video conferencing, as well as Lync’s full Enterprise Voice capabilities.

Bournemouth council's cabinet has agreed to continue its HR and finance outsourcing arrangements with its existing transformation partner, Mouchel, despite the company's financial problems. The transfer will take place on 1 February 2012.

The cabinet ratified the contract extension at a meeting on 6 January 2012 after considering an independent risk assessment based on Mouchel Group's audited financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2011.

It also considered an impartial review of the risk management and contract governance arrangements that are already in place.

About 100 staff from Bournemouth's HR and finance departments will transfer to Mouchel under Tupe rules.

John Beesley, council deputy leader and cabinet member for resources, said: "We are extending this contract having undertaken a great deal of background work."

Atos SA announced that it will acquire a 50% of MSL Group, a provider of real-time results and information systems for large sporting events. The transaction, whose completion is expected before March 31, 2012, also provides an option to Atos to hold all the shares of MSL Group.

Mobile operator O2 is to provide free internet to "millions" of residents and visitors in central London by launching Europe's largest free wi-fi zone.

The service will be rolled out across the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in 2012.

O2 said the deal, which will have no cost to the taxpayer, will enable visitors to "make the most of what London has to offer".

Partners at KPMG have suffered an £80,000 fall in their average share of profits, capping a tough year for Britain’s top accountancy firms.

The firm said that its profits were eroded because recruitment costs for its fast-growing consulting divisions had not been matched by a pick-up in work from takeover deals. These had yielded huge fees for the City’s leading professional services firms before the financial crisis.

O2 has announced that it has won a contract to work with Network Rail to refresh the whole of the company’s current Cisco switch and router estate across 450 sites, including four data centres in the UK. The three year contract with O2 Unify is worth several million pounds. In addition, O2 Unify has been awarded a substantial project to provide the Cisco LAN and WAN infrastructure for Network Rail’s new National Centre, The Quadrant, in Milton Keynes, which will accommodate 3,500 staff from this summer.

Initially O2 Unify will provide support and maintenance services for Network Rail’s current Cisco switch and router estate. Subsequently, O2 Unify will embark on a programme to refresh the Cisco estate, as much of the equipment is moving into its end-of-life cycle and critically will not support the future requirements of the business. The LAN and WAN infrastructure will be a key component that supports the company’s business objective of delivering mission critical network resiliency and availability. The refresh will enable Network Rail to achieve future convergence of services and drive significant efficiencies.

Paul Osborne, Managing Director of O2 Unify said, “Our strong service culture and customer focus from our core mobile business put us in a very strong position to provide wider communications services. We demonstrated strong technical capability in the LAN WAN space as well as good commercial positioning. O2 Unify is viewed as a safe pair of hands to deliver this project and we now provide a whole range of services for Network Rail including project management, business process outsourcing and consultancy as well as products such as WAN, LAN, fixed and mobile. Truly joining their business together.”