Industry news

Mitchells & Butlers, the leading operator of restaurants and pubs in the UK, has tasked Fujitsu with transforming its IT infrastructure to use a private cloud service and managed network.

The multi-million pound outsource will create a hybrid private cloud to deliver a range of on-demand services to improve customer service, such as dynamic menus, queue management and interaction with customer devices such as smartphones, as well as delivering further efficiency savings. Fujitsu’s managed network service will connect the head office to retail outlets via the cloud, and provide a hosted voice platform to cut the cost of accessing telephony services.

The deal builds on an existing relationship with Fujitsu, which has maintained and supported Mitchells & Butlers’ tills and associated hardware for five years.

Fujitsu will standardise M&B’s server infrastructure within its own secure and resilient data centres, linked by a wholly owned, secure network. The IT applications will be virtualised for scalable hosting on Fujitsu’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Storage Managed Service offerings, housed in twinned Fujitsu Cloud Centres near London to keep customer information safe in the UK. Fujitsu will be fully accountable for the infrastructure and network.

Robin Young, commercial director at M&B stated: "Our approach needed to be radically different, to continue with the ambitious growth plans for the company, while reducing the central overhead. We needed technology that didn't require migrating our entire IT estate to the cloud overnight, but a move over time to reflect business needs.

“Most importantly, we needed a genuine partner who could align across our entire estate and work with Mitchells & Butlers not only in the technology space but contribute to the wider business goals.”

Commenting on the new offering, Jon Wolfe, business unit director at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, said: “With consumers ever more choosy about where they spend their money, M&B is making sure it is delivering a quality service that differentiates itself in the marketplace, as well as driving down costs. Fujitsu’s offering will enable M&B to do just that, allowing it to focus on the core business of attracting consumers to its outlets and providing a great customer service.”

Mike Sackman, CIO at Mitchells & Butlers, added: “Over the past year, we’ve refocused our core business to generate greater revenues in food, and plan further expansion over the coming months. We require an agile IT infrastructure to underpin that growth, and Fujitsu has proved through its existing relationship with us, that it is the right partner for the job.”

The EOA are delighted to announce Invest in Spain and Scottish Development International as new sponsors of the 2011 European Outsourcing Association (EOA) Summit & Awards.

Hosted by the EOA’s Spanish chapter, the 2011 EOA Summit & Awards will take place in Madrid on 20th & 21st June 2011. It will look to build on the success of the 2010 event by bringing together Europe’s leading outsourcing suppliers, end-users and support service providers for a two day conference focusing on the latest innovations, trends and developments in the European outsourcing market.

Other sponsors include: PromoMadrid, Omnext, Outsource Magazine, The OUT Group and Valueshore.

For more information on the agenda, how you can enter the awards, register for your place or sponsor, visit the website at: www.eoasummit.co.uk. Alternatively please call the EOA team on +44(0)207 292 8686.

Lancashire County Council and BT have formed a partnership agreement that will deliver millions of pounds of savings for taxpayers.

The contract for a new strategic partnership – which creates a joint venture company called "One Connect" – was signed recently following the first board meeting of the new partnership at County Hall. One Connect will deliver services on behalf of Lancashire County Council from Monday, 16 May.

The strategic partnership will enable the county council to save £10 million per year over the next ten years, with One Connect taking on the delivery of services such as HR and payroll, ICT support and the customer service centre.

The partnership has been created in a way that will allow other public sector organisations including councils, universities, police and fire and rescue services to also choose to join it in future.

Additional potential savings of £30m per year through better buying, quicker delivery of services and improved access to services using the latest technology are among the improvements residents will see through the partnership.

Lancashire County Council and BT have been working closely over recent months to ensure that the transition to One Connect is as smooth as possible. The first benefits of the partnership are already being seen with the introduction of a new "self-service" HR system, 12 months ahead of schedule.

County Councillor Geoff Driver, Leader of Lancashire County Council, said: "Improving county council services and providing value for money for taxpayers is crucial to everything we do and the strategic partnership is a key part of this.

"We have a long track record of delivering excellent services to the people of Lancashire and the strategic partnership will help us build on the good work we've done and deliver even better value for money for Lancashire's taxpayers.

"By using our combined expertise and technology, we will cut red tape, simplify processes used for carrying out many day-to-day tasks, and provide services far more quickly and efficiently. We will also use our strategic expertise to plan to make further savings in the long-term.

"We've been working very closely with BT over the last few months and are looking forward to working with them in this new partnership. Now we have signed up to the partnership we can move forward together to revolutionise the way county council services are delivered."

Neil Rogers, President Government & Health, BT Global Services, said: “We are delighted to have signed a strategic partnership with Lancashire County Council. We are drawing on our extensive knowledge of the local government sector to provide a truly innovative approach. We look forward to delivering excellent service to the people of Lancashire over the next decade. This is a key contract for BT and extends our footprint in this crucial market sector.”

British outsourcing firm Xchanging reported solid trading since January amid an overhaul of its business and said it expected revenue improvements in the second-half of the year.

Xchanging, which is undergoing cost cutting measures and a review of its troubled Cambridge IT business, said on Monday trading in its seasonally quieter first quarter had been solid.

The company, which runs back-office activities such as invoice processing and paying staff, said its financial services and insurance businesses, excluding its U.S. operation, had performed slightly ahead of its expectations.

"Since announcing our four part action plan at the time of our preliminary results we have been very active and have made good progress," acting Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Ken Lever said in a statement.

BT has announced it has signed a Deed of Undertaking (DoU) with the Cabinet Office, enabling it to become a provider of the core network underpinning the Public Sector Network (PSN) programme, a secure “network of networks” specifically for the public sector.

As a result, BT Wholesale becomes a key supplier of open and competitive Government Conveyance Network (GCN) services which will interconnect PSN Direct Network Service Providers (DNSPs), which in turn are supplying government departments and local authorities throughout the UK. In order to supply PSN-compliant networks to its government customer base, BT Global Services, a DNSP major candidate in the UK, will connect to the GCN via BT Wholesale.

GCN will deliver a common secure communications backbone to PSN service providers covering all parts of the Public Sector. The GCN will be one of the enablers for shared services, cloud-based services and datacentre rationalisation, which will deliver benefits to the public sector while reducing cost and complexity. BT’s GCN service will be built on its core UK MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) network, which is already CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group) accredited, as are many BT network services, to the 2.2.4 standard for security and performance that meets Government requirements for the PSN.

Neil Rogers, president of BT Global Services for government and health, said: “Today’s signature of the DoU underlines BT’s commitment to the PSN, providing a full range of services including the GCN. Drawing on our experience of co-designing PSN we can help public sector organisations achieve both cost and service improvements as well as help them transition to PSN compliance. The PSN also creates a new and competitive market for shared ‘cloud’ services on top of the network, something which presents a real opportunity for BT given our expertise in networked IT services.”

Chancellor George Osborne says the UK should be at the forefront of an “open data” revolution, enjoying better services and reduced costs.

Speaking at Google Zeitgeist 2011, Osborne said the government planned to unlock thousands of sets of data to help consumers make informed choices and keep the Government honest over spending.

“Our ambition is to become the world leader in open data, and accelerate the accountability revolution that the internet age has unleashed,” he said, citing the fact that the Government had made 6,000 data sets on costs and spending available.

“Already it seems incredible that this time last year, the British public couldn’t access even some of the most basic information needed to hold the government to account, such as spending data broken down on an item by item basis, procurement tender documents and the salaries of senior government officials.”

Fujitsu is to become the first of the major global ICT services vendors to launch a self-service Cloud platform in the UK.

Known as ‘Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform’, organisations will be able to take advantage of the most robust and reliable self-service Cloud-based ICT infrastructure (compute, storage, network, test and development) available to organisations today. It offers organisations a globally standardised approach to service – regardless of size of organisation.

The “Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform’ is already in live service in Japan, Australia and Singapore and is being rolled out worldwide, hence its name. It hits the two most critical business imperatives head on – it gives companies direct control over managing their Cloud-based infrastructure and protects their business information as data resides in the UK. It offers more resilience than similar offerings on the market as it is the only company to host data in a Tier III certified data centre*; has multiple layers of redundancy to ensure data is not lost to disk failure and has automatic failover servers as standard. The company estimates that an organisation can save up to 40% of its annual IT costs by moving services to the Cloud.

At the heart of this Cloud offering is a self-service portal that allows organisations to retain full control and management but with a massive leap forward in terms of ICT productivity, flexibility and agility. The portal includes its own drag and drop functionality meaning system managers can easily change the configuration of servers, hard disks or load balancers. Equally, applications can be installed or firewall polices changed all from a drop-down menu.

Declan Monaghan, business manager for Cloud computing at Fujitsu UK and Ireland, commented: “The adoption of Cloud technologies is driving a more agile, responsive and innovative approach to ICT. However, we know that organisations moving to the new Cloud model of working need the assurance that they are working with a provider they can trust and one they can work with as their use of applications in the Cloud grows and evolves. As an ICT provider working with some of the UK’s most high profile organisations Fujitsu fits that bill.”

Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process and technology management, has announced that effective June 17, 2011, NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan will become the President and Chief Executive Officer of the company and will be appointed to the Board of Directors. Tyagarajan, the current Chief Operating Officer of Genpact, succeeds Pramod Bhasin who has decided to step down as CEO and member of the Board and become Non-Executive Vice Chairman of the company.

“Tiger is a superb choice to lead Genpact to its next phase of growth and development,” said Robert Scott, Chairman of the Board. “To have someone of Tiger’s talent and experience ready for this role is a testament to Genpact’s deep leadership bench and the strength of its succession planning process. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Pramod for his vision, leadership and outstanding contribution that have built Genpact into a global leader in its industry. He will leave a significant legacy.”

Tyagarajan was CEO of Genpact from 1999 to 2002 and led the business through a critical growth phase as a subsidiary of GE. When Genpact became an independent company, Tyagarajan rejoined Genpact from GE Capital U.S. as EVP, Sales and Business Development from 2005 to 2009. Thereafter, he took on the role of Genpact’s COO. Tyagarajan began his career with the Unilever Group in India, and then worked with Citibank, India. He joined GE Capital in 1994 and held a variety of leadership roles in both India and the U.S. until 2005. He is a mechanical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

“I am delighted to be able to hand over the reins of the company to my long term business partner Tiger,” Bhasin said. “We have worked together for over a decade to build Genpact into a truly global leader. I am confident that he is the right person to take Genpact forward in its next stage of growth. I have been truly privileged to lead this remarkable company and its employees from inception and to have helped create an industry that now provides employment opportunities to millions of people around the world. Along with helping Tiger, particularly in the areas of acquisition integration, organization development and growth in new geographies, I now look forward to other pursuits.”

Tyagarajan said, “I want to take this opportunity to thank Pramod and acknowledge his contribution as the founder and CEO of this company. He has been an extraordinary leader and we have all benefitted tremendously from his leadership and vision over the years.”

Tyagarajan continued, “I am hugely excited to lead Genpact. There are tremendous opportunities ahead of us. We are fundamentally improving the way our clients work. We are building a new “Science of Process” and continue to innovate and invest in comprehensive, cutting-edge technology-based solutions. The recent acquisition of Headstrong has given us exceptional high-end capital markets domain and technology expertise. I look forward to working with our terrific team to continue to create exceptional value for our clients and shareholders.”

Transport for London (TFL) has put out a tender for IT support for its 30,000 employees that will run for 10 years and cost up to £70m.

The tender - which was placed with the Official Journal of the European Union - requests a centralised service desk to provide a single point of contact for all IT-related incidents.

The successful supplier will take on some existing TFL IT staff under TUPE.

In addition to service desk responsibilities, TFL wants the supplier to provide user self-service tools, adherence to governance, service performance reporting based on agreed service levels, customer satisfaction surveying and reporting and continuous service improvement activities and suggestions.

Global IT and Product Engineering Services Company MindTree has announced the integration of its Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Knowledge Services practices, forming a new Data & Analytic Solutions (DAS) practice.

The integration creates one of the world’s largest information management practices offering customers a one-stop-shop to capture, analyse, enhance and view their business information in support of their corporate objectives.

“As our customers look to harness the power of their data, and turn this information into business insights, the integration of our business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics practices into one allows us to enable our customers to better compete in the market space,” said Scott Staples, Head of the DAS practice. “When you combine the breadth of our offerings with our practice size, specialised industry focus and the overall capabilities of MindTree’s complementary groups, our Data & Analytic Solutions practice is strongly positioned to create greater value for our customers than ever before.”

The MindTree DAS practice is headed by MindTree co-founder - Scott Staples, . The practice is currently 800 people strong and is seeing strong growth momentum based on excellent customer traction for this specialized offering.