Industry news

AstraZeneca reaffirms outlook after a leak to sell-side analysts

AstraZeneca reaffirmed short and medium-term forecasts this morning after an inadvertant leak of an out-of-date spreadsheet templeta to sell-side analyst community in connection with a routine consensus estimate collection process had raised some questions. AstraZeneca maintains 2011 expextations communicated on December 20th.

Havering Council reports cost savings of £1.5 million per annum following a transformation of its back-office IT systems and business processes carried out through partnering with Capgemini UK plc. The Council says that the savings will rise to £2.5 million per annum once the second and final phase of the transformation is completed in April 2012. Havering Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Havering, which has a population of 230,000, and Capgemini UK plc is part of the Capgemini Group, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services.

The first phase of the transformation project, completed in just ten months, encompassed the majority of back-office functions at Havering including finance, payroll, HR and procurement, and has resulted in a significant reduction in paperwork and bureaucracy. A multiplicity of complex procedures has been replaced by simplified and standardised business processes based on proven international best practice. The project also involved migrating the Council from ageing earlier-generation IT systems to the latest Oracle enterprise-wide suite of business applications, custom-designed for UK local authorities.

Andrew BlakeHerbert, Group Director of Finance and Commerce at the London Borough of Havering, said: ‘Working with Capgemini, we have transformed our back office from being a largely paper-driven bureaucracy into a focused, modern and efficient business model - saving millions of pounds in the process. The first tranche of savings resulting from this transformation is already in the bank. Over the next five years we expect to save at least £15 million in back office cost, helping us protect frontline services for local people while managing large reductions in Government funding. We don’t know of any other local authority in the UK that has successfully managed such a wide-ranging change programme in such a short space of time.’

Accenture plc will now provide information technology support services to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Financial terms of the deal were kept confidential. The IT support services contract includes one base year with four option periods.

As per the agreement terms, Accenture will install, test and supervise an enterprise resource planning system to support the FBI’s Human Resources Information System. The new system installation will help FBI to modernize its HRIS unit and make its operations more effective and streamlined.

Eduserv has launched the Education Cloud – a suite of cloud services that will help universities and researchers combat the peaks and troughs in compute and storage requirements, meet the flexible demands of researchers and provide off-site disaster recovery facilities.

Eduserv’s Education Cloud features compute and storage offerings under both VMware vCloud and OpenStack, and supports virtual machines running Windows and Linux.

Andy Powell, Eduserv Research Programme Director, comments: “Funding from the University Modernisation Fund enabled us to develop cloud infrastructure to host a number of SaaS pilot projects. We have used what we learnt during the pilot to develop a cloud offering that we believe will meet the specific needs of Higher Education Institutions professionals and students. It has direct connectivity to the JANET backbone, which is dedicated to education and research, and all data will remain in the UK at all times.”

A US bill has caused an uproar in India and the Philippines for punishing American companies for sending their customer call centres overseas.

The legislation, pushed by Republican Tim Bishop and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union, states that companies who outsource their contact centre requirements are not eligible for guaranteed federal loans and grants for a period of five years.

Politicians and corporations fear lost business due to the US bill's protectionist measures. The "US Call Centre Worker and Consumer Protection Act", would also require those companies to report themselves in advance to the Labour Department, which would maintain a public list of the companies that outsource.

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.