Industry news

Lambeth council has launched a procurement for a framework to support a shared service operation of an Oracle e-Business Suite for itself and several other London boroughs.

It is part of Programme Athena, under which a group of councils in the capital are moving towards common processes and procedures for HR, financials and procurement using a shared enterprise resource planning system.

The main purpose of the procurement is to contract an integrator to support the transition to a shared R12 version of the Oracle e-Business suite when support for the R11 version ends in November 2013.

Cisco has announced that it has acquired privately-held Versly. Based in San Francisco, Versly integrates collaboration capabilities via a plug-in into Microsoft Office applications, simplifying the way people work by enabling more effective collaboration around content in documents, spreadsheets, presentations and email.

"Collaboration is a top priority at Cisco. With this acquisition we're enhancing our collaboration offerings and improving the user experience by integrating social technologies within the business applications individuals and teams use at work," said Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager, Collaboration Software Group (CSG), Cisco.

"Furthermore, the integration with Versly will drive productivity improvements for organizations and their knowledge workers, many of whom are among the 600 million Microsoft Office users."

Dell and VMware have jointly announced the availability of the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud® Datacenter Services designed to provide a seamless multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems. Dell is one of the first providers authorized to provide VMware vCloud Datacenter Services for enterprise-class, secure, public, private and hybrid clouds.

Theannouncement is the first public and hybrid cloud offering by Dell and supports Dell’s strategy to provide customers next-generation computing solutions composed of hardware, software and services. Dell will also offer consulting, application and infrastructure services to help companies transform their legacy IT environment and integrate these cloud services effectively in their business.

Dell and VMware will provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) choice for customer organizations, hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers. The offer provides automation, multi-level security and availability in order to manage on-demand capacity, workload scalability, or as a platform to respond to changing business needs more rapidly.

Dell and VMware have jointly announced the availability of the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud® Datacenter Services designed to provide a seamless multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems. Dell is one of the first providers authorized to provide VMware vCloud Datacenter Services for enterprise-class, secure, public, private and hybrid clouds.

Theannouncement is the first public and hybrid cloud offering by Dell and supports Dell’s strategy to provide customers next-generation computing solutions composed of hardware, software and services. Dell will also offer consulting, application and infrastructure services to help companies transform their legacy IT environment and integrate these cloud services effectively in their business.

Dell and VMware will provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) choice for customer organizations, hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers. The offer provides automation, multi-level security and availability in order to manage on-demand capacity, workload scalability, or as a platform to respond to changing business needs more rapidly.

British supermarket giant Tesco has announced a 45 million US dollars (£27.4 million) deal with a US firm to manage its IT network.

New York-state based firm CA Technologies will monitor the IT network for Tesco Group, including Tesco Bank, Tesco.com and Tesco Mobile.

The company will deal with a wide range of IT work from health and performance of its supply chain, including desktop computers, servers, networks, credit card transactions, suppliers and supply orders.

CA Technologies has 472,000 staff working in more than 5,000 stores across 14 countries.

Mike McNamara, Tesco's chief information officer, said: "Our systems infrastructure needs to work for our IT team in order to do their job for our customers, our colleagues and our suppliers."

Courion Corporation, the leading provider of Access Risk Management solutions that help organizations cost effectively deal with identity and access compliance and security risk, has announced that London Fire Brigade, the UK's largest fire service and one of the world's largest metropolitan services, has implemented its Access Assurance Suite™ solution to automate password management and enforce consistent password policy for its 7,000 full-time firefighters and support staff.

Using Courion, London Fire Brigade has slashed the volume of calls to its IT Service Desk at shift changes, significantly reducing the overhead costs of password resets.

"To provide round-the-clock service, we operate a two-shift, four-watch system at stations. Firefighters that don't access their accounts on a daily basis often forget their passwords, which historically caused a huge volume of calls being logged with the service desk at each change of watch," said Sally Devine, head of ICT contracts and support services at London Fire Brigade. "This placed unnecessary pressures on the service desk team, making it increasingly difficult for them to achieve the required SLAs in relation to other ICT services."

HCL Technologies Ltd., a leading global IT services provider has announced its strategic partnership with Basware, a leading provider of purchase-to-pay solutions. HCL will leverage Basware’s industry leading Invoice Automation, Travel & Expense, Procurement and Connectivity solutions to deliver customers with process enhancements and increased cost reductions.

With the Basware P2P model, HCL will help customers align their procurement and finance organizations as well as ensure effective networking of P2P processes with the supply base.

“Customers are fast realizing that automating their purchase-to-pay process is an important way to drive significant cost reductions and improve productivity. Our partnership with Basware completes HCL’s F&A BPO strategy to provide end-to-end finance & accounting services across the purchase-to-pay (P2P) landscape. This partnership with Basware powers HCL’s P2P services by providing customers with a strong technology platform, and the ease to shift to e-invoicing while benefiting from process efficiencies and cost reductions,” said Randy Mueller, Vice President – Finance & Accounting, Business Services, HCL Technologies Ltd.

“We are pleased to be working with HCL to help their customers reap the benefits that purchase-to-pay automation delivers, such as cost savings, greater productivity and streamlined processes,” said Ari Salonen, Basware General Manager, North America. “Most importantly, these companies will gain critical visibility and control over their entire company-wide spend.”

2011 Outsourcing Review - So Far..

There is no doubt that 2011 has been an eventful year for outsourcing so far.

We’ve seen economic and budgetary pressures creating a buyer’s market, while the ongoing recession and public sector cuts have meant that outsourcing suppliers are expected to provide even more for less and many mega contracts have been replaced by more transparent, flexible and short-term collaborations.

Cost will undoubtedly remain a key driver for outsourcing, but 2011 has brought a shift in attitude – now it’s more about cost efficiencies and change for the long term, rather than a short-term cutting exercise. Clients want to partner with outsourcing companies to transform their businesses for the better – to deliver greater efficiency, improve flexibility, increase quality of service to their customers, and help them stay ahead of the competition through innovative solutions.

According to the 2011 Q2 TPI Index, growth in ITO and BPO contracting activity continued in the first half of the year while Americas’ resurgence continued to seem unlikely in 2H11.

Roger Newman, Senior Vice President, Mahindra Satyam, commented: “So far this year we have had cause for a cautious optimism towards our business. There is a fair amount of activity in the marketplace and some large deals have taken place, but the majority of deals we are bidding on are projects or transformational programmes rather than full outsourcing deals. This activity is evident across most of the major industry verticals. Uncertainty about the economic situation often means that companies are unwilling to expand their own headcount and this pushes businesses to outsource companies such as ourselves.

“Looking inwardly, we believe that the growth levers for IT and ITeS companies today are predominantly hovering around growth, differentiation and capabilities. This is a continuous cycle that determines strength in the market and the mind, and our strategy is aligned to these three aspects. Growth means better account mining, getting new logos and striking strategic alliances and investments into niche players.”

The outsourcing industry, and IT as a whole, has been strongly focussed on the cloud and the potential for flexible, cost effective computing. It was the most important topic at the start of 2011 and half a year has done nothing to change that. Providers and end users can no longer ignore its possibilities – understanding the cloud and how it can revolutionise the industry is both exciting and challenging.

David Ebsworth, CTO of Oncore IT, said: “With discussion on the cloud so prevalent, it’s no surprise that we’ve seen more multi-tenanted solutions coming to the market as the year’s gone on. Virtualisation and consolidation continues to drive the desire to relocate not just secondary and disaster recovery systems, but increasingly critical IT to the cloud. Overcoming the associated technology issues needs careful evaluation of any existing infrastructure and realistic expectations of what an end user requires.

“Finally is data. There’s no doubt that the volume being outsourced will increase as businesses move to protect their mission critical resources. All the while, companies will expect a simultaneous cost reduction. Attempts for an effective balance will continue as payment models are experimented with.”

A collaborative and flexible approach has become far more relevant in the 2011 economic landscape where growth is slow and the need for more creative approaches to driving efficiencies and improving service quality has become the key.

Rainer Majcen, Managing Director, Public Sector, arvato UK & Ireland said: “New thinking and innovative solutions will be vital to the future of public sector organisations. As a result, alternative service delivery models, such as co-operation with other local or regional public sector bodies, or service delivery vehicles like employee ownership or social enterprises are currently being considered.

“Ultimately, addressing the individual needs of a locality and focusing on creating a flexible and adaptable partnership will ensure that relationships prosper; adding value to all organisations in the community and delivering much needed cost savings for the public sector, whilst not compromising on the breadth and quality of the service offering. arvato’s relationship with Chesterfield Borough Council and the potential £4 million savings is a good example of the strength of this type of partnership.”

Consumers are also becoming more demanding in their search for immediate answers to complex enquiries. As a result, they are looking to an increasing number of channels for solutions. The key challenge to contact centres is to be able to effectively manage data from multiple channels. This requires solutions that have both the intelligence and flexibility to adapt to changing market and consumer needs.

Mark Brown, Managing Director, Contact Centres & Loyalty, arvato UK, commented: “Social media has empowered all consumers to become a broadcaster or journalist, so customer service becomes even more important and speed is of the essence; a complaint sent via Twitter that is left with no response management overnight could be spread worldwide very quickly.

“It’s important that all communications channels – whether it’s voice, email, hard copy or social media – are consolidated at the point of receipt to prevent duplication and ensure consistently high standards of handling and data capture.”

As the year draws to a close, the outsourcing industry will continue to prioritise standardisation and professionalism. Customers will increasingly ask their outsourcing providers to provide ‘more for less’ along with an increase in public sector shared services and providers offering flexible, innovative and cost effective contracts.

Despite the troubles in the global economy, the worldwide book market is continuing to grow. It was worth $ 75 Billion in 2010, and is expected by Outsell to hit $ 79.4 Billion in 2013.

Digital book sales are still dwarfed by print, but they are beginning to pick up at an increasing rate. Outsell predict that “the percentage of the worldwide book market attributed to e-books will rise from 3.2% in 2009 to 16.1% in 2013”. This rise in digital sales will be at the cost of print. So where in the market are these changes occurring, and what are the factors at play?

Regional differences

There are large disparities in eBook sales figures around the world, and this has much to do with the way that devices have launched at different times in different markets. The Amazon Kindle has been extremely successful in the US (while Amazon does not release specific figures for the Kindle, their overall sales for Q2 2011 grew to $9.91 billion, with much of this attributed to their Kindle store). However, the device been more slowly introduced in Europe (the UK received its first Kindles in August 2010, while the German Kindle only launched in April 2011). While both the UK and Germany have their own dedicated content stores online via Amazon, France is still to receive a Kindle store, or direct sales of the device via Amazon.fr, and thus the smaller French market is shared between Apple with their iBookstore and domestic retailers such as Fnac.

Expansion is therefore much stronger in the United States where the market grew by 76.2% in 2010. As Ronn Dunn, President & CEO of Cengage noted at the Jouve organised ‘April In Paris’ (an international digital publishing conference held in Paris earlier this year), the “digital content market is now worth over $ 1 billion”. It’s not just the so-called ‘e-tailers’ who are profiting. Barnes and Noble is one of the few bricks and mortar stores to succeed in the digital era, and their Nook ereader (especially the color version) has also proved extremely successful.

Apple must also be mentioned. Despite the fact that they had no history of work in publishing before the launch of the iPad, the device quickly became seen as the ideal platform for enriched ebooks. This is a market which will certainly expand.

However Europe is set to catch up. Joerg Pfuhl, CEO of Random House, observed that the projected 2011 growth curve for eBooks sales in Germany matched the American market one year beforehand.

Digital reading is well established in Japan, where large numbers of adults enjoy reading novels on their phones and other portable devices, and there is certainly plenty of potential for growth in markets like China. Dianli Yu, the president of the Commercial Press, one of China’s largest publishers, has spoken about the huge potential for digital content, saying that "the market is huge", with over 800 million mobile phone users in China.

All previous experience seems to indicate that when there is a surge in adoption of ereading devices, which can be seen as a sort of digital ‘tipping point’, then there will be a major increase in eBook sales.

Market segment differences

Print markets are shrinking and digital markets are growing; as different market sectors contract and expand, there will be significant fluctuations, and new winners and losers will emerge over the next few years.

The majority of growth will be in the Consumer Book Market. Most digital reading platforms like the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, have been fairly exclusively targeted at mass consumers. It must also be remembered that for learning, neither ereaders nor the iPad will be the preferred platform for educational content – it will remain PC based. Initiatives like Mind Tap are electronic educational environments which use digital content to create personalized learning pathways.

Nonetheless, as a percentage of the total publishing market, sales of digital content are largest within the professional sector. Businesses have adopted digital formats due to their lower price points and economies of scale. This is another area where we will see major growth, as firms move more of their business data away from costly paper and into digital formats.

What is driving these changes?

Digital technologies can offer significant savings to publishers and wider businesses. There are none of the overheads relating to physical content, and the printing, storage and distribution it requires. However, as with the music industry, customers are demanding to see these savings reflected in retail prices.

This new generation of digital content means that books are available to download wirelessly - they never go out of print, and they can be accessed anywhere. Customers’ reading preferences can also be highly accurately tracked. Power is placed back into the hands of the author and the consumer, and publishers can build up a much clearer idea of what their customers enjoy.

Print on demand technologies also allow publishers to offer customers single copies of a book, without having to commit to costly reprints. These technologies will gain in importance, and will perhaps operate as a stepping stone between digital and paper formats. These sorts of new high quality technologies will bridge the gap between the print and digital worlds, allowing consumers to enjoy content like photographs, which might start life in digital form and end up in a traditionally bound photo album.

Print on demand offers new business perspectives with business models (cartoons, cultural heritage content, personalized books). It’s not just a question of optimizing the back office. Jouve has 30% growth in these areas, which have been opened up thanks to our investments in workflow systems (especially in optimizing the way we process single orders).

How content providers need to respond

Publishers need to move fast to make their titles available in digital formats. With new technologies, content providers will be able to meet unlimited demand with no time delays for popular titles. If you are not in a position to meet your customers’ requirements, and offer them a range of options, then you are likely to be left behind.

The solution is to offer the widest possible range of content via digital, print and print on demand to ensure that consumers can have their book as they want, where they want, and when they want.

The future is uncertain, but working in partnership with other companies can help to create the next wave of opportunities, and can also mean that risk is shared. There is no silver bullet solution, but it’s by offering customers a range of solutions for their content needs that publishers and businesses will succeed during this testing time.

The Government of India’s Ministry of Communications & Information Technology has issued a clarification regarding India’s new privacy regulations, known as the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information)

Under the Rules, which were first published on April 11, an individual’s prior written consent is required to process or disclose sensitive personal data. Outsourcing service providers in India had been concerned that it would be impossible to comply with this requirement given that they typically do not have direct contact with the individuals from whom they would need to obtain consent. The clarification states that any “body corporate providing services relating to collection, storage, dealing or handling of sensitive personal data or information under contractual obligation with any legal entity located within or outside India” is exempt from the requirement to obtain consent.

Accordingly, Indian outsourcing service providers will not need to obtain consent from individuals before processing their data, regardless of whether the outsourcing services are provided to companies based in India or abroad. The Rules will apply only to Indian companies that obtain sensitive personal data directly.