Industry news

Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Rypple, a cloud-based social performance management company. The acquisition signifies salesforce.com’s entry into the human capital management (HCM) market for the social enterprise.

Salesforce.com plans to re-launch Rypple as “Successforce” and create a new HCM business unit, which will be run by John Wookey. Rypple’s unique social technologies will also extend the value of salesforce.com’s existing core products. The transaction is expected to close in salesforce.com’s fiscal first quarter ending April 30, 2012, subject to customary closing conditions.

“Salesforce.com and Rypple share a vision for extending the social enterprise to transform the way we work,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “The next generation of HCM is not just about a cloud delivery model, it’s about a fundamentally better way to recruit, manage and empower employees in a social world.”

Mitie Group Plc, the strategic outsourcing and energy services company, has signed a ten-year contract with Essex County Council.

The FTSE 250 company will work with the Council to deliver a transformational outsourcing contract which includes facilities and property management as well as energy services. MITIE will be working in partnership with Lambert Smith Hampton to provide estate management services to the Council including strategic asset management and new ways of working that deliver sustainable improvements for Essex.

Under the new contract MITIE will employ more than 500 people to service over 350 sites including Essex County Hall, offices, libraries, community centres and depots covering 145,000 square metres.

Ruby McGregor-Smith, Chief Executive of MITIE, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for MITIE to deliver a transformational outsourcing offering to one of the UK’s most visionary local authorities. We are delighted to be working with Essex County Council and are looking forward to developing this relationship over the long-term.”

EMC Corporation today announced that ITV has made a purchase of EMC® Isilon® scale-out NAS to provide a storage platform.

The deal will enable the television network to transition to a pan-itv HD file based infrastructure in order to store and manage all content digitally and make it available through existing broadcast channels and the online platforms.

In August 2010, ITV announced its Transformation Plan, aimed at redesigning and refocusing the business over a five-year period. Isilon and ITV have agreed a deal to provide Storage for all ITV production sites and two datacenter’s to allow ITV to confidently scale-out storage in-line with its transformational plan, future growth and success of the business.

Andrew Ioannou, Director of Strategy for ITV said, “We are delighted to have entered an agreement with EMC Isilon to support a core part of ITV’s technology platform. The deal marks continued progress of ITV’s Transformation Plan and a further step in our move towards a fully tapeless environment.”

WNS, a leading provider of global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services, has announced its partnership with SEEinfobiz, a global software technology consulting and outsourcing services firm, to further strengthen its capabilities in customized e-fulfillment-based Order-to-Cash (O2C) solutions.

This partnership will enable WNS to provide multi-lingual and multi-format, e-fulfillment-based F&A solutions to its clients globally, spread across various industry verticals.

"We are delighted to have established this partnership with SEEinfobiz. The e-fulfillment-based solution will ensure a much more accurate, and seamless delivery of O2C solutions to our clients and end-customers; it will also help WNS to deliver at a higher level of the value chain, by driving operational excellence and enhance our F&A capabilities," said Keshav R. Murugesh, Group CEO, WNS. "With this partnership, we intend to create a dynamic end-to-end web-based F&A solution to enrich the customer experience, and broaden our service offerings to both existing and prospective customers," he added.

Logica shares fell to a three-year low as the company announced a drop in its forecast and 1,300 job cuts.

Logica cut its 2011 forecast for the second time in just over a month, expecting around three per cent growth – down from above three per cent in November’s prediction and five per cent earlier in the year.

The group put this down to the economic slump and said it intended to respond by speeding up the restructuring that would otherwise be spread over two years.

More than1,300 jobs will be cut, and the firm will take one-off charges of around £93m

Ofsted has published a report into ICT in schools in England over the last three years slamming the teaching of ICT.

It states in no uncertain terms that young people are being failed by the standard of teaching and the content of the curriculum when it comes to learning about technology which will be essential to their personal and professional lives.

After examining inspections of ICT teaching in 167 primary, secondary and special schools, the education regulator concludes that the big problem is at the secondary level.

In 30 out of the 74 secondary schools, pupils got to 16 without having been given the skills necessary to progress further in the subject. And in almost a fifth of these schools Oftsed describes achievement in ICT as "inadequate" - a failure rate that would be considered something of a scandal if it applied in some other subjects.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has launched a procurement worth £200m for identity assurance services to support its major programmes, including the provision of universal credit and personal independence payments. The services could also be used by other parts of central government.

The DWP published a tender notice in the Official Journal of the European Union for a framework contract, valued at £200m over four years with an option to extend for two more, for services that would provide identity assurance for approximately 21 million claimants.

Thomas Cook has said it will close 200 UK stores over the next two years as part of its UK business turnaround plan - 125 more than previously announced.

Staff at 115 of the affected stores are expected to be informed of their fate on Wednesday with the loss of 661 jobs.

News of the closures came as the travel firm reported a £398m ($616m) loss for the year to the end of September.

A new Foresight project investigating the future of manufacturing out to 2050 was launched today by Business Secretary Vince Cable.

The two-year project will call on industry and academic expertise from the UK and abroad to look at the long-term picture for the manufacturing sector, investigating global trends and drivers of change. It will explore how the UK can maximise these opportunities and provide an evidence base to help policy-makers navigate a challenging and uncertain future.

It is being led by the Foresight team in the Government Office for Science under the direction of the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, and is sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The findings will inform Government policy throughout the duration of the project and beyond.

HM Revenue and Customs spends £721m through AspireDepartment reduced its spending on IT outsourcing deal with Capgemini in 2010-11, but significantly increased expenditure with the firm itself.

The consortium signed to HM Revenue and Custom's (HMRC's) IT Aspire contract remains first on the tax collection agency's top 100 suppliers list, despite a 6% decrease in the amount spent through the contract, according to figures released by the department in response to a freedom of information request from GGC.

HMRC spent £721m through Aspire in 2010-11, compared with £765m in 2009-10. The contract with Capgemini and other IT suppliers dates back to 2003 and will run until 2017. Despite the fall for Aspire, HMRC's spending with Capgemini went up by 455%, with the firm coming ninth in the top 100 list. It spent £11m with the company in 2010-11, up from £2m in the previous year.