Industry news

Hampshire County Council, Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and Hampshire Constabulary have pledged their commitment to investigate the potential to combine support services - saving money and protecting and improving frontline services.

Amid unprecedented challenges in the face of reduced levels of Government funding and additional operational pressures, all three organisations have begun programmes which will transform and develop new and innovative ways of working. Identifying opportunities for efficiencies and service improvements through greater joint working and sharing of resources is key to this.

The three organisations will now explore ways to work together more closely to share support services, which will include areas such as information technology, human resources, finance, procurement, legal and property management. A detailed business case will be developed to this effect for each of their authorities to review and make a final decision upon.

BT has been awarded certification to a new British Standard in recognition of its Smart City partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council.

To achieve this BT has successfully demonstrated it meets best practice in terms of Collaborative Business Relationships following rigorous assessment of its 11-year ICT partnership with the Scottish local authority. It is the first ICT company to gain the BS 11000 certification – and it’s also the first time the new standard has been awarded to a local authority partnership.

In making the award, BSI (the British Standards Institution) highlighted the additional value created by the partnership, not just in identifying further opportunities that benefited both parties, but in getting involved in local community projects and even the Council’s staff awards.

The assessment looked at evidence from across all aspects of the partnership, from vision and values to working together, knowledge and skills, policies and people and commitment to continuous approval.

Andrew Unsworth, head of e-government at the City of Edinburgh Council, said: "Working with the right partner is essential for the City of Edinburgh Council to ensure we are delivering the best possible services.

“This certification reflects how far the partnership with BT has come in the last 10 years. It confirms the quality of our people and practices and demonstrates the added value that collaborative working brings."

Keynote Systems has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Mobile Complete, Inc, doing business as DeviceAnywhere, a leading enterprise-class cloud-based platform for testing and monitoring mobile websites and apps, for approximately $60.0 million in cash plus a potential earn-out.

“We welcome DeviceAnywhere’s talented employees to Keynote. We are especially pleased that industry pioneers Faraz and David will continue to provide expertise, vision and leadership by heading up our new Keynote-DeviceAnywhere division.”

Umang Gupta, Chairman and CEO of Keynote, said: “Combining DeviceAnywhere’s leading testing and quality assurance (QA) cloud-based solutions with our strong mobile monitoring business firmly establishes Keynote as a leader in the mobile testing and monitoring markets. The resulting increased product breadth and scale meaningfully enhance our competitive position. In addition, the acquisition will expand our addressable market into the immediately adjacent enterprise mobile testing and quality assurance space, which we project could enable us to grow this into a $100 million business.”

Also based in San Mateo, DeviceAnywhere will continue to be led by its co-founders Faraz A. Syed, CEO, and David J. Marsyla, CTO, and will operate as a standalone subsidiary, similar to Keynote-SIGOS, after the transaction.

Gupta added, “We welcome DeviceAnywhere’s talented employees to Keynote. We are especially pleased that industry pioneers Faraz and David will continue to provide expertise, vision and leadership by heading up our new Keynote-DeviceAnywhere division.”

Sony has suspended over 90,000 user accounts after unauthorised login attempts were discovered yesterday.

Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer, Philip Reitinger, said: "We want to let you know that we have detected attempts on Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment (“Networks”) services to test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database. These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources.

In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks. We have taken steps to mitigate the activity."

IBM and Nirvanix has announced the integration of cloud storage technology from Nirvanix as part of an expanded IBM SmartCloud Enterprise storage services portfolio available to customers worldwide.

With the integration of Nirvanix cloud storage technology, IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise storage services will provide customers with a solution designed to support millions of users, billions of objects and exabytes of data to complement IBM’s existing security-rich, virtual server environments in the cloud.

“We look forward to teaming with IBM in the enterprise cloud storage space and cooperatively enhancing our leading cloud storage service for the most demanding IBM global customers,” said Scott Genereux, President and CEO of Nirvanix. “Today’s announcement marks an important step in accomplishing Nirvanix’s strategic goals of capturing cloud storage market share and accelerating revenue growth.”

Sitel, a leading customer care outsourcing provider, today announced that Dagoberto “Bert” Quintana, 51, has been named Chief Executive Officer. Quintana, who has been serving as President and Chief Operating Officer of Sitel since February 2010, succeeds David Garner, 53, in the role of Chief Executive Officer. Quintana will continue to serve as President. Garner will continue to serve as non-executive Chairman of Sitel. Garner will continue to support the Board and the executive team of Sitel on strategic matters and as necessary on commercial and operational initiatives.

Garner said, “Bert Quintana is an energetic, customer-focused leader in our industry. Working with Bert over the past two years, I am confident of his commitment to our Customer #1 strategies as well as to enhancing Sitel’s market position, revenue growth and stockholder value. Bert is ready for this next challenge.”

Quintana said, “Sitel is a growing company with a strong client base. I look forward to continuing the progress we have made over the past two years in my new role. I also want to recognize Dave Garner for his many contributions to Sitel. Dave is a true industry leader and has mentored me over the past two years to reach for this next challenge. I thank him for his continued commitment to Sitel and look forward to continuing to work with Dave in his role as Chairman in the future.”

Key highlights from last quarter include:

- Revenues were $1,746 million for the quarter ending September 30, 2011

- QoQ growth was 4.5%; YoY growth was 16.7%

- 45 clients were added during the quarter

- Gross addition of 15,352 employees (net addition of 8,262) for the quarter

“The global macroeconomic environment is still uncertain. It is and should be a concern for the IT industry.” said S. D. Shibulal, CEO and Managing Director. “In this scenario, clients are looking for new opportunities for growth, accelerated innovation and increased returns on investments. Our strategic initiatives and organisation structure will enable us to build long term partnerships with our clients and help them drive their business objectives.”

Gloucester City Council and Civica has launched an innovative partnership to outsource the delivery of revenues, benefits and welfare rights services for the authority and deliver annual savings of £220,000.

The seven-year agreement between the council and Civica will see the partnership maintain and improve service delivery to local citizens while achieving financial savings. It is the first step in the creation of a centre of excellence in the city for local government revenues and benefits administration that will sustain local employment and bring new business to Gloucester through the provision of outsourced business process services to other local authorities around the UK.

The agreement is part of the wider process underway at Gloucester City Council to transform the authority’s approach to providing back office, transactional and corporate support services and to systematically deliver vital budget savings across all these operations.

Civica, which is a supplier to more than 90% of the UK’s local authorities, provides IT systems and business process expertise to 175 local government revenues and benefits departments. As a strong and stable partner, the company is able to build a specialist and highly flexible service model that provides an alternative to both large scale ‘one size fits all’ outsourcing and local authority shared service models. Both these existing models can lack the flexibility and scalability to respond to the rapid and significant changes faced by councils or to accommodate additional work.

Councillor Debbie Llewellyn, Cabinet Member for Performance and Resources at Gloucester City Council, said: “This ground-breaking agreement provides the council with a means to improve, rather than cut, our services to citizens. The model harnesses our employees’ knowledge and experience with Civica’s service improvement know-how to meet local outcomes while achieving annual cost savings of £220,000. It’s very pleasing to be setting up a service centre with the potential to increase its contribution to the local economy and local jobs as time goes on.”

The Commons Public Accounts Committee publishes its 49th report of session 2010-12, on the basis of evidence from the Cabinet Office.

The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said: "The Efficiency and Reform Group, created initially to lead the drive to cut government spending by £6 billion in 2010-11, has made a good start, but a lot of that is down to key players in government pulling in the same direction with a high profile target in mind. In the long term there will need to be a much deeper change in the cultural and institutional structure of government.

The Group reported to us that its actions have so far led to £3.75 billion worth of efficiency savings. Sustaining these savings will be a challenge, requiring senior civil servants to strengthen their implementation and project management skills.

We welcome the level of detail in the Group's reported savings. This degree of transparency is a big improvement on the very poor standard of reporting by departments.

The MOU is intended to pave the way for the two companies to identify and pursue infrastructure opportunities in India and sub-Saharan Africa, with an initial focus on power generation, transmission, railways, mining, water and wastewater.

"This agreement with Tata, one of the largest and most respected companies in India, offers Balfour Beatty an exciting strategic opportunity to develop a substantial business in India and Africa, markets of high potential,” said Balfour Beatty chief executive Ian Tyler. “While we have an established presence in India, through our professional services business, Parsons Brinckerhoff, we now seek to develop our full range of capabilities in the region. This initiative is in line with our broader strategy to develop our business in the high-growth emerging markets.”