Industry news

Sprint is to offer new managed telepresence servives for enterprise customers as a result of a new partnership with Tata Communcataions.

Tata will provide managed telepresence technology for HD video conferencing with “superior audio, video and environmental qualities”

Not only does Sprint bring their stronger brand recognition to the table, they provide the Global MPLS network that will power these managed telepresence features.

Although these services will never quite match up to face-to-face meetings, teleprescense is constantly improving and is becoming ever more important to enterprise, especially given its contribution to saving on emissions from car and air travel.

Swiss banking giant UBS is to cut 500 jobs from its worldwide operation.

As part of a cost cutting drive, around 180 jobs will be lost in Switzerland, 90 in the USA and the remainder from the UK and Asia-Pacific. The total represents marginally less than 6% of UBS' 8,700-strong total IT workforce.

A spokesperson for the bank stated that some of the job cuts relate to its arrangement with Indian IT offshore outsourcing provider Cognizant.

40 employees are said to have opted for early retirement, and some positions may be relocated, but redundancies will definitely take place.

Nokia will outsource Symbian software development and support activities to Accenture, in a deal due to be finalised in October. It is expected Nokia will transfer approximately 2,800 employees currently located in China, Finland, India, the UK and the US.

Accenture will retrain and redeploy transferred employees, developing their capabilities to provide mobility software, business and operational services for the Windows Phone platform.

Nokia’s executive VP for Smart Devices Jo Harlow stated that joining forces with Accenture allows them to meet their continued commitment to supporting their Symbian smartphone customers.

"As we move our primary smartphone platform to Windows Phone, we will look to explore potential opportunities to tap this talent pool as they develop and expand their knowledge and capabilities beyond Symbian."

The Police National Database (PND) was launched officially on Wednesday. Now police forces nationwide are able to share intelligence on crime. The PND has been tested over recent months, and focuses on information relevant to crimes, not victim and witness details.

The database was developed with Logica, costing £75.6m.

National Policing Improvement Agency chief executive Nick Gargan stated that the PND would allow police investigators to see the full intelligence picture. "We know that child abusers, drug dealers and terrorists don't respect force boundaries, but in many cases forces have been conducting their investigations in isolation, unable to see everything the police service knows about a suspect and unable to make fully informed decision. Until now this information had to be shared manually, a fallible and sometimes bureaucratic process dependent on the right staff being able to access and share the relevant files, which could take up to two weeks,"

The PND was developed in accordance with the recommendations of Lord Bichard's inquiry following the Soham murders in 2002.

BP’s partner in the Deepwater Horizon disaster has blamed them for the majority of the failures that preceding the oil spill.

Now estranged from BP, it was Transoceant that owned the rig, also supplying most of the personnel. The lawsuit brought by BP is valued $40 billion (£24.8 billion).

After holding its own internal investigation, Transocean decided to plug the well using cementing techniques that are not approved in the USA. It claims that BP misinterpreted critical pressure tests for the well, and missed vital warning signs of a possible blowout. Their report states that the force of the gushing oil stopped the blowout preventer from sealing the well. BP stands accused of using a faulty well design.

BP said yesterday that the Transocean report “fails to acknowledge the significance of Transocean’s role in the event.”

On 20th June, the European outsourcing community gathered in Madrid to debate the latest trends and learn from each other’s experiences. Now in its 2nd year, the European Outsourcing Association Summit & Awards also rewarded the preeminent projects, providers, innovations and locations for best practice in pan-European outsourcing.

“We come together to learn from each other” said Juan Luis Rodriguez Sanchez Del Alamo, of Repsol, during a rousing opening speech that set the tone for the whole event. Indeed, a prodigious amount of knowledge came forth from the lectern, as the masterminds of Europe’s premier projects took to the stage, magnanimously giving the inside track on their successes and challenges in the past year.

First up was Duncan Aitchison, Partner & President of TPI, whose presentation “What’s in store for the sourcing industry?” was optimistic for 2011/12, explaining that “after a period of financial turmoil, demand never comes back in the same way it left” before going on to detail how “there is a lot more scope coming to market. Things that haven’t been outsourced before are being sent out.”

Outsourcing has become more prevalent due to the current times of austerity with the public sector as an example, outsourcing more tax paying services than ever before.

One of the most intricately detailed and deeply insightful presentations of the day came from Santiago Uriel Arias, of Confederación Espanola de Cajas de Ahorro who heads up the collaboration between all savings banks in Spain. This gives him a uniquely omniscient perspective as he speaks about efficiencies brought about by technology and BPO-sharing. “Size does not equal efficiency – it is the sourcing model that is the key,” he said, while demonstrating his theories graphically.

Chris Halward, of the NOA, presented on NOA Pathway - the Middlesex University-accredited qualification for Outsourcing Professionals - before giving way to Jon Burbanks, of Capital One, a highly experienced outsourcing contract negotiator, who is currently working the Pathway. He is undoubtedly a star student - the audience were enraptured by his self-chosen project: “Why did deals work better than others? Why did some need more work than others?”

The afternoon session was themed around transition – specifically renegotiation, renewal and exit. Presentations from Heather Rodgers of the NOA, Juan Carlos Ferrer of Everis, and Wolfgang Fritzmeyer of EOA/ Baker & McKenzie were full of practical recommendations about change management, building flexibility into contracts and how to avoid the need for litigation. Juan Carlos focused on increasing productivity and cost efficiency by “becoming more ‘lean’ in outsourcing contracts,” while Wolfgang covered what to do in various scenarios of exit management. “Lawyers always come last; sometimes they even come a bit late,” he quipped.

Then came then the whisky! Scottish Development International (SDI) provided a fine selection of single malts to a thirsty mob gathered around their stand, and Douglas McCheyne, Senior Executive of International Marketing, was delighted how the event was “helping to keep Scotland at front of mind when investment decisions are made.”

The EOA Awards took place in the historic Casino De Madrid. Speaking before the awards, Andy Rogers, EOA board representative for corporate users said “The submissions this year were of an exceptionally high standard and the record number of submissions – more than double that of last year – shows that the EOA Awards are becoming the de facto standard of quality for the European outsourcing community.”

After a delectable dinner, and copious vino tinto, the award winners were announced. Outsourcing Service Provider/Advisory of the Year was Luxoft, who were also instrumental in the Ukraine’s successful bid to be Offshoring Destination Of The Year. BPO Contract of the Year and IT Outsourcing Project of the Year were Centrica PLC & Ferrovial S.A. respectively. Outsourcing End-User of the Year went to Telefonica Germany while Business Integration Partners and Prisa walked away with the Award for Innovation In Outsourcing. A hard-fought tussle, too close for the judges to call, resulted in CSC – Orange (France Telecom) and Indra being declared joint winners of the Award for Corporate Social Responsibility.

CSC’s Director of Customer Experience Mike Plummer was “delighted and proud to have won. It reflects great team work with the client,” he said, referring to the joint project with Orange regarding incentivising customers’ recycling of mobile phones.

The celebrations continued into the night… one bleary-eyed delegate – who asked not to be named – told how he was on the town til 4am!

The high standard of presentations continued the next day, particularly from the charismatic Carlos Flores Ramirez, of NIIT Technologies, whose engaging presentation was laden with thought provoking analogies – he stimulated debate by comparing outsourcing contracts to arranged marriages and tango dancing.

In a joint presentation Valueshore and PromoMadrid highlighted the credibility of Spain as an ITO and BPO nearshoring destination, presentations that fellow sponsors Invest In Spain would have definitely approved of. Valueshore’s Daniel Naoum spoke of the support that they can offer making inroads into Spain, finding “the right companies, the right contracts, the right contacts.”

The nearshoring vs. offshoring debate continued during a panel discussion featuring Valueshore and Stefanini TechTeam – who are truly global, have a presence in 27 countries worldwide – whose representatives, Rik Demeulemeester and Liveen Van Brackell had earlier given a presentation entitled ‘How To Break The Offshore / Nearshore Dilemma.’

After presenting on innovation, and how to address the disconnect between what suppliers are doing and what end users want, via metrics, structures and governance, KPMG’s Lee Ayling said of the conference and awards “absolutely fantastic – really diverse, drawn from all of the chapters. The quality just gets better and better.”

Jaco de Vries, of OmNext, said: - “the success of European Outsourcing Association Summit & Awards proves outsourcing is growing, getting more professional, leading to more collaboration, more partnership.”

For further information on the EOA summit and awards, visit www.eoasummit.com

Metro Bank, the first new high street bank in the UK for over 130 years, has agreed to outsource its recruitment function to RPO specialist, Consort Group, for a further three years. The deal follows on from an initial agreement to outsource recruitment to Consort concluded in March 2009.

Consort Group is targeted with bringing the total number of Metro Bank employees to 400 by the end of the year as part of a drive to expand the bank’s existing Store network to a target of 200 sites by 2020.

“Our focus is on our customers,” says Metro Bank CEO, Craig Donaldson, “and to make sure that we provide them with the best possible service, we have taken the view that we should partner with the experts in process areas such as recruitment and IT, the best of breed who can provide us with flexibility and scalability. We’ve chosen to work with Consort Group because getting recruitment right is incredibly important to Metro Bank – our people and the service they provide are the key points that set us apart from the competition. Consort have shown they have the passion, the commitment and the expertise to deliver exactly the sort of people this organisation needs.”

“The relationship between Metro Bank and Consort Group works so well because we are both highly entrepreneurial businesses with a total focus on customer service,” says Consort Group director, Julie Bullock. “Working with Metro Bank is a fantastic opportunity to create and build a state of the art recruitment function which can identify, attract and deliver the type of individual who will make the bank’s ambitious growth plans happen.”

National Savings and Investments is planning to set up an IT outsourcing contract worth between £700m-£1.5bn to replace its current deal with Siemens when it expires on 31 March 2014.

In an advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Union, it says that it plans to start its procurement in the last quarter of 2011.

On 11 July it will hold an event in London to provide information on the scope of requirements, sourcing model and procurement timescales.

The European Commission (EC) has approved CSC's acquisition of healthcare software maker iSoft.

The acquisition was announced earlier this year after iSoft suspended shares and put itself up for sale. Many believed the deal was necessary for CSC to preserve its contracts with the NHS, which have recently been slammed by the National Audit Office (NAO) as bad value for money.

GlassHouse Technologies, a global provider of independent data centre consulting and managed services, has announced that it has been selected to lead the IT infrastructure upgrade at Olswang LLP, one of Europe's leading law firms. Under terms of the deal, Olswang will completely outsource its IT department to GlassHouse, tasking them to manage the infrastructure, automate manual processes, improve efficiencies and streamline IT operations. These managed services support and IT enhancements are critical for Olswang as it looks to sharpen its edge in the highly competitive legal industry and continue to expand operations globally.

The project, which kicks off in July, is a continuation of work by Systems Group Integration, acquired by GlassHouse in September 2009, and is a combination of GlassHouse’s managed services and consulting services. GlassHouse will help run the Olswang environment more efficiently, outline best practices for operations and provide overall support for the infrastructure. The initial project will focus on three distinct initiatives – workspace management, exchange migrations and archiving.

Key to the agreement was GlassHouse’s global reach and Olswang’s ability to outsource its IT operations. The integration of the GlassHouse team with the Olswang IT staff allows for a deep sharing of knowledge on modern IT infrastructure implementations while also providing the Olswang IT staff with benefits like added IT resources to complete projects and the ability to reallocate staff to focus on other mission-critical initiatives.

“Our rapid growth and drive to expand globally necessitated a more strategic approach to better manage our existing and newly acquired operations,” said Clive Knott, IT director at Olswang LLP. “With GlassHouse’s expert team, we are outsourcing our IT operations to a knowledgeable third-party to automate processes, reduce costs and improve efficiency across our organisation. Integrating into GlassHouse’s IT team has given us the flexibility to accomplish our IT goals while also providing benefits and the capability to reallocate staff to broaden their expertise on strategic IT initiatives.”