Industry news

Cetrica has appointed David Bickerton as its global chief information officer (CIO); he joins from British Gas, a Centrica subsidiary.

Bickerton is now heading up the development and delivery of an integrated information system strategy for the energy group.

Bickerton joined Centrica in 2004 and has previously worked for Fujitsu and ICL where he held a number of general management roles.

As the British Gas CIO, Bickerton took the company’s IT in-house, breaking ties with IT supplier Accenture in a highly-publicised legal battle over a billing system.

He then rebuilt the firm's IT department which now comprises more than 600 employees, who have delivered around 180 projects in 2009 in connection to the billing platform. An additional 100 staff hires are expected this year.

The news of Bickerton's promotion follow the release of Centrica's financial results last month - the company's profits jumped 65% to £886m in the first six months of the year, fuelled by higher gas prices and a strong performance from its US arm Direct Energy.

The Centrica CIO role had been vacant for some time; the previous CIO at Centrica was Gareth Lewis, now chief information officer at the Financial Services Authority.

British Gas has yet to find a replacement for Bickerton.

Dell has acquired 3PAR, a global provider of highly-virtualised storage solutions with advanced data management features, including dynamic tiering and thin provisioning, for multi-tenant cloud-computing environments.

The acquisition will allow Dell to lead an open and integrated approach to data management delivers increased efficiency with a goal of radically reducing data management costs and significantly streamlining operations.

These savings enable Dell customers to make room in their budgets for other strategic investments. 3PAR’s product portfolio complements Dell’s goal to make IT simpler and more affordable.

Dell plans to make 3PAR an integral part of storage portfolio, including PowerVault, EqualLogic and Dell/EMC. With 3PAR, Dell will offer systems and customer choice at every storage tier, from direct-attach to highly-virtualised, clustered SANS.

The transaction is valued at approximately $1.15 billion, net of 3PAR’s cash. Terms of the acquisition were approved by the board of directors of each company.

After closing, Dell plans to maintain and invest in additional engineering and sales capability. There are no plans to move the current operations.

3PAR was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Fremont.

According to reports, the government of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has revealed a special policy offering capital and training subsidy to rural business process outsourcing (BPO) units.

While Tamil Nadu is an important Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hub, the BPO industry's presence is mainly limited to Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore.

With the ICT industry now expanding to smaller cities, towns and into villages the state government felt the need for a comprehensive Rural BPO policy to increase employment opportunities in the rural areas.

The decision seeks deepen penetration of the sector in the state, specific policy initiatives to attract BPO units to rural areas are necessary.

The Tamil Nadu government IT department will facilitate the process by liaising with interested institutions wishing to pursue a partnership with BPO units.

Also, a subsidy of 15% would be supplied on capital investments such as cost of hardware and equipment to any rural BPO unit that had been functioning at least three years and directly employing a minimum of 100 trained people.

New rural BPO units needing to train its operational staff, a training subsidy of Rs 1500 per month per person for three months would be provided by the government.

The policy anticipates will promote entrepreneurship amongst rural youth benefiting faculty and students of educational institutions.

Global provider of advanced application and product development services Luxoft, has opened its technical development centre in the UK.

Located in Welwyn Garden City, near London, the new facility is a significant investment in the company’s growth strategy and further expansion of its global delivery capabilities.

The Luxoft Development Centre has been set up to provide product realisation services for large telecom equipment vendors.

One of Luxoft’s major partners, Avaya, will help kick off the opening of the development centre by continuing its relationship with Luxoft at the UK facility, jointly working on the development of Avaya’s IP Office product range.

Luxoft’s Centre opens with a team of over 50 highly skilled engineers, with capacity for growth. With a larger presence in the UK, Luxoft will be able to better serve existing UK-based customers such as Deutsche Bank, UBS and Areva, as well as establish new partnerships in the region.

The full portfolio of services to be provided by the Development Centre includes: software engineering, complete product development, detailed trouble shooting of equipment, as well as customer support services and account management for UK–based customers.

Luxoft’s new facility complements current delivery sites located in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, enabling the company to offer blended onshore / offshore delivery capabilities to deliver highly skilled innovations and developments, cost effectively and with a customer-centric approach.

Electricians at St James’ Hospital Dublin are staging a one-day stoppage as a dispute over outsourcing work escalates.

Members of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) will walk off the job the hospital after no agreement was reached at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC).

Union leaders confirmed emergency life and limb cover will be provided during the industrial action, but warned the technical services department will be affected.

This is the third stoppage by members at the hospital since the beginning of the month.

On 10 August, talks over outsourcing the work of electricians in the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union adjourned after three hours with no significant progress made.

The dispute is over management moves to reduce the role of electricians on site. Outside contractors have been brought in without prior agreement with the TEEU under agreed procedures. The union is concerned about health and safety, as well as job security issues resulting from the contracting out of services.

Other craft workers at the hospital, including members of Unite and UCATT, have refused to pass the pickets, leading to the effective closure of the Technical Services Department at St James’s hospital during the stoppages.

Transport for London (TfL) has published a tender for the provision of average speed cameras for a project it plans to trial, according to the notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 10 August 2010.

The government department said that the cameras will be used to "enforce average speed limits in urban areas", according to GC News.

The notice is a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) and that there are no concrete plans in place yet, however it will form part of a wider project currently being undertaken with four London boroughs.

More announcements are expected to be made post-October.

The speed camera notice was published three days after TfL cancelled a tender for road traffic predictive modelling software due to tighter spending measures being introduced at the organisation.

Wessex Water cites commercial and technical reasons for dropping sewer-based fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) rollout, although a pilot project was completed.

The project will be completed using micro-trenching and digging up roads as a way to avoid the rollout "coming to a halt”. Borough Council has given planning permission for these techniques to be used.

Network supplier i3 Group was planning to deliver the FTTH service for Bournemouth residents through sewer systems owned by Wessex Water.

In a released statement i3 indicated that "citing technical issues as a reason is misleading in respect to the viability of the i3 Group's FS System, a patented method of laying fibre in ready made ducts including sewer pipes."

But the reasons for the change in plans remain vague at best.

Meanwhile, Scottish Water has recently signed a non-exclusive framework agreement with i3 to expand operations across Scotland. The utilities provider is working with i3 Group to allow a similar sewer-based FTTH project in Dundee.

Global IT services & solutions company ITC Infotech, fully owned subsidiary of ITC Ltd, is working with Oracle to provide Loyalty & Marketing based BPO services.

As per the BPO initiative agreement, ITC Infotech will have the non-exclusive license to use the Loyalty & Marketing programme solution offered by Oracle.

Oracle’s cutting edge offerings will support ITC Infotech in providing customers loyalty, marketing & customer relationship management (CRM) solutions in an outsourced business process model.

ITC Infotech is the first system integrator company globally to implement Siebel Loyalty for the airlines industry, for the hospitality industry, and for a coalition loyalty across hospitality & retail companies.

Along with its partner(s), ITC Infotech, can also provide services in the areas of loyalty strategy and program design, rewards and fulfillment, analytics, partner management, hosting, etc.

This new partnership with Oracle will allow ITC Infotech to expand its services to the BPO market globally.

Swansea City and County Council is seeking a four-year framework agreement to check the condition of technology. The agreement will be accessible to all public sector bodies across Wales and would be worth between £4-12m.

The framework agreement for the supply of an Information Technology Health Check (ITHC) and associated services, would enable compliance with security best practice guidelines and the requirements of GCSx Code Of Connection (CoCo) 4.1 and PCI-DSS accreditation.

The majority of public sector networks are currently accredited to handle protectively marked information up to level 3, ‘restrict’, but some members may have a requirement to test their network at higher levels.

Compliance with PCI-DSS, a payment card industry standard, will also be covered by the deal.

The contracts will be awarded principally on supplier and service quality (60% of the weighting), followed by price (40%).

Vendors have until 8 September to request participation; up to seven suppliers will be invited to bid.

The woes of debt-laden integrated services group Connaught continue.

More than £400m have been wiped off the value of Connaught after it warned on 25 June that public spending cuts would see its revenues fall by £80m this year.

Lloyds Banking Group a junior member of a lending syndicate led by Royal Bank of Scotland, confirmed on Wednesday night that it would not start selling off loans. A debt-for-equity swap with the banks remains a possibility.

Investor confidence in the firm suffered after Barclays sold its entire debt exposure of £19m ($29.7m) for about 37% of face value.

Breeden European Partners, Parvus Asset Management and Norges Bank, which manages the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, have sold down their stakes. Toscafund, which has built a stake over the past month, is also believed to have reduced its holding.

Deloitte is investigating Connaught's accounting policies while a new management team has been set up to lead an attempted turnaround. The firm’s CEO, Mark Tincknell, and its finance director, Stephen Hill, left the business in early July.