Industry news

NextiraOne, Europe’s leading expert in communications services, has signed a new contract with existing customer The Listening Company to provide a new state-of-the-art Contact Centre environment at its newly acquired Manchester office. The new infrastructure will include Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony and full Advisor voice recording for around 500 Customer Service Representatives (CSRs), plus a new Local Area Network (LAN).

The Listening Company provides outsourced Contact Centre and Customer Service facilities for a range of household brands and Blue Chip companies, including Sky, Microsoft, Toyota and a number of major leisure and financial organisations. NextiraOne is a long-term partner and has implemented several previous Contact Centre solutions for The Listening Company, including its Headquarters in Richmond and sites in Portsmouth, Newcastle and Tonbridge.

Under the contract, valued at £1.2 million, NextiraOne will design, project manage and implement the new VoIP Contact Centre and Local Area Network for a site taken over by The Listening Company in Manchester city centre and will bring the facilities there to the highest standards and quality of service for Contact Centres. NextiraOne has designed a multi-vendor solution combining and integrating technologies from Alcatel-Lucent Genesys, Cisco and Nice. This represents a new technical design for The Listening Company and is being seen as a pilot project and the blueprint for possible future upgrades to existing sites.

The move to VoIP brings significant cost benefits as well as better quality and reliability of service, whilst the introduction of full Advisor voice recording provides the necessary compliance, particularly for financial transactions and customer service issues, important to many of The Listening Company’s major clients. It will also be used for training purposes.

“Our work puts us in the front line of customer service on behalf of our clients”, said Richard Simpson, Director of IT Architecture, at The Listening Company. “Quality of Service (QoS) and compliance issues are both of paramount importance since they directly affect the corporate image and reputation of our customers. The move to VoIP and full Advisor recording allows us to continue the process of improving our services with the right mix of quality and compliance, in over nine years of working together, NextiraOne has proven itself to be a reliable and cost-effective partner and we have returned to them for all our expansion needs.”

Richard Wright, Sales Director at NextiraOne UK, said: “The Listening Company is yet another example of how our long-term relationships with customers build a level of trust and partnership that not only leads to repeat business for us but encourages innovative approaches to customers’ needs. We listened to The Listening Company and proposed a solution which will provide tangible benefits in its operations.”

NextiraOne is Europe’s leading expert in communications services and has a direct sales and service presence in 17 countries, serving more than 60,000 customers. The company designs, installs, maintains and supports sustainable solutions to meet the communications needs of its customers - from voice, data and video to mobility, security and applications.

HP today announced a solution that helps wireless and broadband companies generate new revenue by providing midsize business customers with cloud-based mobile device management services.

With HP Cloud Services Enablement for Device Management as a Service (HP CSE for DMaaS), communications service providers (CSPs) can help businesses solve a costly and burdensome problem: managing employee smartphones, notebooks and other mobile devices. As work moves outside the office, businesses must support a wide array of mobile devices, networks, operating systems and applications.

With HP CSE for DMaaS, CSPs can provide businesses with an efficient, flexible, services-on-demand solution. Through a secure, customizable web portal, IT staff can manage mobile devices and PCs through the cloud. Using over-the-air technology they can configure devices, distribute applications, diagnose problems, enforce security policies and protect data with full back-up and restore capability.

The benefits for businesses are: reduced cost, complexity and risk; access to state-of-the-art mobile device management technology; reduced capital investment; and the ability to extend high-value productivity applications to mobile workers.

“Employees are taking their work on the road, and companies must evolve more efficient ways to extend full support for these employees and their devices,” said Stacy Crook, senior research analyst, IDC. ”Telecom companies will value a solution that provides both the opportunity to provide business customers with cost-effective mobile device management services over the cloud – and the impetus to kickstart a new high-growth business.”

“As mobile device management becomes more complex and costly, companies need help from a trusted provider,” said Tim Marsden, director, Communications and Media Solutions, HP. “CSPs can become that provider. With the HP solution, they can leverage the advantages of the cloud, efficiently manage a company’s mobile devices and, ultimately, build a new business for themselves.”

HP CSE for DMaaS is the third offering in the HP portfolio, following previous announcements of communications as a service and infrastructure as a service.

TechTeam Global, Inc., a worldwide provider of information technology outsourcing and business process outsourcing services, today announced that it has become an authorised reseller of the Google Apps™ Premier Edition suite of communication and collaboration tools, and will provide services to help customers implement and use the toolset. Drawing on its extensive experience supporting end-user environments for medium to large companies globally, TechTeam is positioning itself to help organizations transition to cloud-based solutions.

The Google Apps suite of cloud computing applications provides simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organisations. With Google Apps, users can use applications such as Gmail™, Google Talk™, Google Calendar™, Google Docs™, Google Sites™, and Google Video™ for business on their own domain to work together more effectively.

TechTeam will offer value-added services to help customers with needs assessment, training, pilot implementation, migration, deployment and ongoing support to ensure a successful transition and ongoing productive use of this powerful suite of tools. The company's substantial experience providing services for end-user computing environments enables it to deliver value well beyond the technology implementation, with an approach that includes full consideration of end user and business process needs. Ongoing support from TechTeam will include a multilingual Google Apps help desk to answer questions and address other end user needs quickly and effectively.

TechTeam will bring further value to Google Apps customers through its experience working with the unique requirements of large and multinational organizations. The company has the maturity, process discipline and organizational depth required to ensure long-term success in these complex environments.

"We are excited by this new opportunity to help our customers," said Gary J. Cotshott, president and chief executive officer of TechTeam Global. "We recognise the tremendous value that Google Apps can bring to organisations, and know that our capabilities and experience can greatly benefit them as they move to the cloud."

Cotshott continued, "We are carefully watching technology trends and listening to our customers' needs. We expect to build further capabilities to help customers take full advantage of the cloud computing model."

TechTeam is a recognized industry leader in help desk outsourcing and end-user computing support. The company was named No. 1 globally in help desk outsourcing across both Tier 1 and Mid Tier customers, as well as No. 1 globally in IT infrastructure outsourcing for Mid Tier customers, in Datamonitor's 2009 Black Book of Outsourcing report on Top Infrastructure Management Outsourcing Vendors.

Plans to open additional office at Xiamen centre

Dell has planned to open a second major China operations centre next year in Chengdu with manufacturing, sales and services to support the Western-China development strategy.

Dell said that it is developing its manufacturing and customer support centre in the West Chengdu High-Tech Park, which is expected to be operational in 2011.

The new Chengdu operation adds to the company's presence in China, which includes two computer manufacturing plants and an enterprise command centre in Xiamen; a product-design/engineering center in Shanghai; and an international service centre in Dalian.

The company also plans to open an additional office at its flagship centre in Xiamen and hire up to 500 team members later this year to support its projected growth needs in North Asia and globally.

Accenture today announced it has received two Oracle PartnerNetwork North America Titan Awards for its work in public sector and business intelligence/data warehousing. The awards were announced at the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference, which kicked off Sunday in San Francisco.

The awards recognize business partners for innovative and successful uses of Oracle technology. Winners are selected for excellence in solving real-world customer challenges and for their development and deployment of Oracle technology.

“This is an exciting time to be working with Oracle and we’re thrilled to be awarded for work in such significant parts of our business,” said Terri Strauss, managing director, North America Oracle Practice. “We’re proud that our teams go to work every day not to just deliver a solution, but to solve real-world challenges that our clients are facing. It’s rewarding to see how much their contribution makes a difference.”

HP today announced integrated private cloud solutions customized for Oracle applications that significantly shorten and simplify the deployment process.

HP Private Cloud Solutions for Oracle Applications are specifically engineered to support complex, multi-tiered environments, so clients can deploy Oracle applications in hours. The HP hardware and software offerings ship together from HP Factory Express pre-optimized for PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Based on HP Converged Infrastructure, the turnkey solutions are easy to buy and install, eliminating guesswork, weeks of configuration time, and minimizing architectural design effort.

The new HP Private Cloud Solutions for Oracle Applications are based on HP BladeSystem Matrix and enhanced with HP Cloud Service Automation software and HP StorageWorks data services. The solutions offer one-touch application provisioning as well as a self-service portal for delivering Oracle application services on-demand.

With a common management environment for the integrated server, storage and networking infrastructure, clients can significantly reduce maintenance tasks and costs. They also provide automated deployment, monitoring and compliance of Oracle applications.

Through HP Cloud Maps customized for Oracle applications and imported directly into HP BladeSystem Matrix, clients can rapidly populate data and build a catalog of application services for the business.

HP Cloud Consulting Services provide the expertise needed for clients to transform their existing delivery approaches into more efficient shared-services models, including discovery, design and implementation.

“To ensure the best service delivery across an organization, clients need applications and infrastructure to be tightly integrated and IT systems to be tuned to the unique demands of each application environment,” said Mike Crowsen, vice president, Oracle Alliance, HP. “No other vendor has integrated infrastructure for Oracle applications to the extent HP has with its Private Cloud Solutions for Oracle Applications, enabling clients to achieve levels of deployment speed, simplicity and flexibility never before possible.”

“Clients’ application service delivery should be streamlined and simplified, and services delivered more efficiently and securely,” said Judson Althoff, senior vice president, Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales, Oracle. “HP Converged Infrastructure – in particular the new HP Private Cloud Solutions for Oracle Applications – delivers an open, common architecture, managed in a common way that can be optimized for the needs of any application, in any environment.”

Availability and pricing

The solutions will be available worldwide from HP and its channel partner network. HP Private Cloud Solution for PeopleSoft is planned to be available in October and the Oracle e-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Infrastructure solutions is planned to be available by the end of the year.

For under $700,000, the PeopleSoft solution provides enterprise businesses with the complete HP BladeSystem Matrix infrastructure, integrated management, cloud service framework, factory integration and on-site startup services. For an additional cost, clients can engage HP Consulting Services based on individual client requirements. Operating systems and Oracle software are purchased separately.

Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), a subsidiary of Constellation Energy (CEG), has teamed with Accenture (ACN) and Oracle to implement a smart meter network for its 1.2 million customers. The planned implementation is part of BGE’s smart grid initiative that aims to reduce peak electricity demand, increase customer service and enhance operational performance.

Smart grid will provide customers with detailed information regarding energy consumption and cost, and will deliver data that will enable BGE to enhance the performance of its distribution network. Combined with BGE’s energy efficiency and demand response initiatives, smart grid will help the state of Maryland, under EmPOWER Maryland, achieve its goal of a 15 percent reduction in total system demand by 2015.

“BGE is pleased to partner with both Accenture and Oracle - two premier companies - that will enable us to deliver the significant transformational benefits of smart grid to each of our 1.2 million customers,” said Kenneth W. DeFontes, president and chief executive officer of BGE. “Those benefits include at least $2.5 billion worth of savings for BGE customers over the life of the project, as well as major new enhancements in customer service and reliability. Accenture’s experience in intelligent networks and Oracle’s in software, positions BGE to make those transformational benefits a reality.”

Accenture will provide systems integration services including the design, build and management of a customer web portal, meter data management system, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and integration related to BGE’s customer care and billing and outage management systems. Accenture also will provide project management support through planning, execution, field deployment and change management activities.

BGE’s smart meter network will leverage Oracle’s utilities meter data management system to help manage and analyze high volumes of meter data more effectively while providing customers with detailed energy usage data, which is expected to result in decreased peak energy consumption and electric bills. BGE also plans to integrate the meter data management system with its existing Oracle utilities network (outage) management system to enhance outage management processes with near real-time outage and restoration verification capabilities.

Stu Solomon, senior executive in Accenture’s Utilities industry group, said, “BGE, as an industry leader, is committed to transforming its business and network to better serve its customers, strengthen its workforce, and comply with regulatory requirements. The U.S. Department of Energy, through the Smart Grid program, has granted BGE a unique opportunity to further enhance its infrastructure so that its customers can benefit from enhanced reliability, reduced costs, and greater control of their home energy usage. Accenture is committed to helping BGE leverage the power of intelligent networks and build a grid of the future so that utility customers in Central Maryland can realize the benefits envisioned by BGE and regulatory authorities.”

Stephan Scholl, senior vice president and general manager for Oracle Utilities said, “We’re pleased to team with Accenture to deliver tangible business value to BGE and its smart grid initiatives. BGE’s investment in several Oracle Utilities products validates the comprehensive smart grid choice we offer to the industry.”

As part of its implementation of smart grid, BGE plans to be one of the first utilities in the nation to offer smart energy pricing, whereby customers can earn rebates for reducing electricity usage during peak times of the day. In 2008 and 2009 respectively, BGE, with the support of Accenture, conducted two smart energy pricing pilots during which participating households reduced peak energy consumption ranging from 22 percent to 37 percent. BGE estimates reduction in energy usage will ease the need for future power generation plants and other capacity upgrades which will reduce costs for BGE and its customers.

BT has won a five-year contract with Debenhams to transform the high street retailer’s data network and upgrade it onto BT’s next generation, high-speed 21CN software-driven network.

BT Global Services, BT’s networked IT services division, will upgrade Debenhams’ computer networks that connect 159 stores across the UK and Ireland, distribution centres and data centres. The network, which transmits sales and stock order details from Debenhams’ stores to its head office and supply chain centres around the UK, will be up to 16 times faster, allowing the retailer to roll-out new computer applications, communicate faster and gain longer term business benefits from this new strategic technology platform.

As well as upgrading the retailer’s wide area network (WAN) using high-speed 'Ethernet in the first mile' technology, BT will also provide new network management tools, which will monitor systems to help ensure that links to Debenhams’ tills, supply chain systems and transactional database are always running. It will also identify any areas of the computer network that are performing poorly, so that they can be fixed quickly.

Steve Kircher, IT director, at Debenhams, said: “It’s a fundamental requirement for retailers to have IT systems that are always available – transmitting vital sales, transactions and information around the business.

“By future-proofing and closely monitoring our IT networks, Debenhams will not only be able to communicate faster and more efficiently, we will also be able to stay ahead of competition and be ready to roll-out new applications in line with business requirements.”

In addition, Debenhams will use the managed security monitoring service, BT Counterpane, drawing on BT’s highly-trained security experts and sophisticated surveillance technology to stay ahead of any software vulnerabilities, threats and malicious attacks the company may face.

Diane McAuliffe, director of retail & professional services, BT Global Services, said: “We’re thrilled that Debenhams has chosen BT. This is a landmark project that will transform Debenhams’ business critical IT systems, which we hope will allow them to steal a march on the competition, future-proof systems for the coming years, whilst delivering cost savings to the business.”

BT will overhaul the network at Debenhams stores, warehouses and data centres over the coming months to ensure that the new systems are all in place ahead of the busy Christmas trading period.

BT will also deploy its Application Optimisation Service, using a combination of physical and virtual engines, which will allow Debenhams to monitor and see how individual applications are performing on the network and prioritise certain ones to maximise performance.

Debenhams is a long-term customer of BT, with the telecoms and IT services company already providing telephony services and the retailer’s previous IP Clear network.

Lockheed Martin has won a role on a new $2.8 billion, seven-year indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract to provide information technology solutions to the Social Security Administration (SSA).

The Information Technology Support Services Contract (ITSSC) encompasses a complete range of services related to SSA’s major systems modernization initiatives. Over the seven-year contract period, Lockheed Martin will receive ITSSC task orders to provide support in the areas of Design, Development, Testing, and Maintenance; and Data Base Administration, Imaging, and Document Management.

Lockheed Martin has been supporting SSA since 1989, when it began work under the agency’s Software Support Services Contract.

“Over the course of this decades-long partnership, we’ve seen the SSA not just modernize, but truly revolutionize how it delivers vital services to our nation’s citizens,” said Michael Leff, Director, Lockheed Martin Health Information Management Solutions. “Lockheed Martin is proud to continue serving as a partner in the ongoing transformation of an agency that supports the health and economic well-being of millions of Americans.”

The ITSSC continues work Lockheed Martin is currently performing under the SSA’s Agency Wide Support Services Contract. Recent achievements under the AWSSC include integrating electronic medical records into SSA processes and leveraging the Nationwide Health Information Network; developing new, web-based self-service tools that enable more timely service delivery; and applying Enterprise Architecture strategies to drive agency efficiencies.

IT departments are more satisfied with the services offered by IT service providers - but not hugely more satisifed - a major research project published in November will reveal.

The survey, which assesses UK IT departments' satisfaction levels with IT service providers, is expected show that businesses believe that service providers have improved their quality of service over the past year.

But preliminary results suggest that as service providers offer better value for money, IT departments are becoming more demanding of higher quality and competitive prices.

"They are becoming more demanding: for a service provider to score well, and a user to be satisfied, they have to do more than they did a few years ago, so the bar is being raised, " said Stan Lepeak, director of global research.

EquaTerra's 2010 UK Service Provider Performance and Satisfaction Study will assess the views of over 200 organisations on their service providers, and the trends in organisaitons' outsourcing plans.

"Satisfaction levels are going up year by year but not by a lot, because buyers are getting more demanding," said Lepeak.

"While buyers desire things like transformation and innovation, the real focus is getting the most for the pound invested. They are not cutting suppliers any slack. That is going to continue for some time," he said.

As prices have fallen, organisations that signed outsourcing deals four or five years ago are finding themselves at a disadvantage.

"We are seeing some buyers stuck with deals that they are not happy with, but changing providers is not easy to do. Its easier said than done to re-price it or go with another provider," said Lepeak.

The research is expected to show that organisations rate service providers lower for flexibility and innovation than for cost and quality. But this reflects the priorities of the buyers.

"To some extent buyers who are dissatisfied with cost levels should realise that if you are always pushing on cost, you are going to have an impact on innovation," said Lepeak.

Despite protectionist pressures, the trend is for businesses to continue to push more work off shore to India or central Europe, early findings from Equaterra suggest.