Industry news

  • 11 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    ICAP plc, a major force in financial information delivery and brokering, has selected Accenture to develop and maintain its EU credit-trading platform.

    The five year project will be delivered through Accenture’s Global Delivery Network, which includes over 50 delivery centres across five different continents.

    James Dawson, Business Manager of credit products at ICAP, said: “This initiative is designed to increase the capabilities and cost-efficiencies of our credit-trading platform in order to continue to drive growth in an increasingly dynamic and evolving global marketplace”.

  • 11 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    Steria, a European leader in the deployment of transport IT systems, has been chosen to deploy a large-scale taxi management system for Aéroports de Lyon.

    The new system, to be delivered in partnership with IES, Representative and FTPC, aims to reduce passengers' taxi wait times significantly and give the Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport means to monitor and manage taxis much more efficiently. The airport, which caters for up to seven million passengers annually, hopes the system to play an integral part in ensuring well managed and regular taxi services for customers.

    This new contract follows similar systems rolled out at the Paris Charles de Gaulle and London Heathrow airports.

  • 9 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    Cognizant a leading provider of global consulting, technology and business process services, today announced the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Los Angeles, CA-based Strategic Vision Consulting, Inc. (SVC), a leading management and technology consulting firm with over 60 employees serving the media and entertainment industry. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

    SVC focuses on high-impact consulting and systems implementation for leading media and entertainment companies, including the major studios, broadcasters, post-production facilities and interactive media companies. In addition, SVC possesses extensive experience providing technology strategy and planning, and program and project management services.

    "We welcome the SVC team to Cognizant. This acquisition will expand our consulting capabilities in the media and entertainment industry and will allow us to help media and entertainment companies respond to the opportunities brought about by the digital transformation of the industry," said Francisco D’Souza, president and CEO, Cognizant. "The combination of SVC’s strong relationships in the entertainment industry and Cognizant’s global delivery model positions Cognizant as a services leader within the fast-growing media and entertainment industry."

    "We are very pleased to join the Cognizant family," said Frank Leal, co-founder and managing principal, SVC. "The combination of our market-leading consulting capability in the entertainment segment and Cognizant’s strengths as a top global services player will allow us to deliver superior services to our collective clients by providing them with a broader range of services. We found a great cultural fit between both companies in terms of commitment to unparallel client satisfaction, entrepreneurial spirit, corporate culture, and overall vision for the future of the global services industry."

  • 9 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    China Telecom, China’s largest fixed network operator, has selected Alcatel-Lucent for a multi-million Euro contract to manage the expansion of its nation-wide IP metro area networks.

    Alcatel-Lucent will provide IP routing solutions to help China Telecom deliver premium IP services to its residential and business customers in the densely populated regions of Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shanghai, Sichuan, Hubei, Guizhou, Ningxia and Gansu.

    The project supports China Telecom’s initiative to transform itself into a full service operator. Once the solution has been fully deployed, China Telecom will be able to provide multiple IP-based services such as 3G wireless broadband, IPTV and virtual private network (VPN) services using a single network infrastructure.

    Olivia Qiu, President of Alcatel Shanghai Bell, said: “Service providers are looking for solutions that can support the effective delivery of high-quality next-generation services. This latest win with China Telecom is another example of a tier-one operator who has chosen the Alcatel-Lucent service routing portfolio as the foundation for its network transformation project.”

  • 9 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    Sunrise, the second largest telecommunications provider in Switzerland, has awarded Alcatel-Lucent a seven year contract to manage the operation of its mobile, fixed and data networks.

    Through the deal, worth 340 million Euros to Alcatel, Sunrise hopes to ensure the long-term high quality deployment and management of the network and significantly reduce operational costs.

    Under the terms of the deal, 290 employees will be transferred between the two organisations.

  • 9 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    HSBC, one of the world’s largest financial sercives institutions, has renewed and extended its outsourcing relationship with Capgemini.

    The relationship, which has existed for the last 17 years, will see Capgemini continue to support HSBC in several key strategic businesses, including Consumer Lending, Credit Cards, Group Consumer Finance and Insurance. Capgemini’s remit extends across all HSBC IT from legacy to modern Web-based systems used in: improving customer experience; launching new products; meeting compliance needs; and entering new geographies.

    John Carr, chief operating officer at HSBC Technology Services, said: “Renewing our relationship with Capgemini accelerates the benefits of the global delivery model, paving the path for amplified productivity, predictability and speed.”

    Through the renewal, HSBC is expected to use 4,500 man-years of Capgemini resources by the end of 2010.

  • 6 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    The buzzword ‘outsourcing’ has been a much talked about trend in global business for decades and it’s more prevalant than ever. Faced with an increase in globalisation and the need to cut costs while ramping up productivity, organisations are moving services, processes and product development abroad – or simply out of house. One core function being outsourced more and more is application development.

    For many, outsourcing development will be the best decision they ever make because it promises cost savings and increased profits. Others are not so fortunate. Roughly 47% of outsourcing projects are being cancelled before they’re completed, according to research from Diamond Technology Consultants. Once you bring in a team of outside developers and consultants to take on specific areas of your application development, daunting challenges can appear, not least of which is maintaining communications and cohesiveness among the entire development team.

    Since you can’t rely on an outsourced organisation to share your IT culture or understand your rules, it’s imperative that you have systems in place to ensure everyone is communicating well and moving in the same direction. Fortunately, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions are designed to help meet this challenge. With ALM you gain control, processes, visibility and accountability at each stage of the development cycle.

    DECIDING TO OUTSOURCE – THE BENEFITS

    What if someone told you that you could double the size of your application development organisation without increasing cost; or that you could take advantage of a pool of skilled engineers in a wide variety of technologies without having them all on your payroll? Now more than ever, businesses understand that linking technology with best practices is the way to gain and maintain competitive advantage. Successful organisations are responding with outsourcing strategies -- understanding that evolution and adaptation of business processes are essential for survival.

    Outsourcing promises a list of benefits that you could probably find on any CIO’s wish list:

    • Add high skill/low cost resources to your development team

    • Add new areas of technical competency

    • Increase delivery predictability

    • Increase productivity

    • Rapidly access additional staff resources in response to shifts in demand or for specific project needs

    • Increase flexibility in managing staff budget

    Taking advantage of the significant benefits offered by outsourcing while maintaining communications and cohesiveness across teams will ultimately be the difference between success and failure.

    DECIDING TO OUTSOURCE – THE MUST-HAVES

    Keeping control in your court

    Maintaining management control is a critical factor for successful outsourcing. If you lose control of the processes, the promised benefits of outsourcing will never be realised. You need visibility into the project backlog, resource allocation, and current status. You need confidence that the process you defined is enforced and automated, regardless of where the development is occurring. If you’re subject to compliance or best-practices audits, you must ensure that the appropriate tracking and reporting is in place for all development locations. All of these can be addressed by ALM.

    Process visibility

    One of the most important ingredients of your ALM solution is that it puts everyone involved—IT managers and developers, whether outsourced or in-house—onto the same solution. IT managers gain the much-needed visibility into the development processes—who’s doing what, how they’re doing it, how long it takes, and when goals are being met or missed. Developers gain a clear view into what they need to do next and, most importantly, what's been done by other developers, whether they’re in the next cubicle or in India. This eliminates any wasted duplication of efforts. And this visibility is critical to the management of outsourced software development processes because without it, neither process definition nor measurement can occur.

    Traceability for compliance

    We all know regulatory compliance is no easy exercise for organisations large or small, so when you add a team of consultants across the globe into the mix, you have a whole new layer of complexity. But with ALM it doesn't really matter. Since the outsourced team works from your ALM solution, you have a built-in, structured, repeatable, and auditable software development process. Compliance is simply a matter of setting up the appropriate processes and generating the necessary reports. The solution enforces your compliance strategy and stores the necessary historical information, regardless of the location of the users.

    Managing access

    ALM solutions are absolutely essential for remote, outside development teams to successfully work with the organisation. With ALM, you can carefully restrict access and ensure that only those parts of your code base that you wish to make available are accessible. A sophisticated ALM solution has both access control of software components and control for application releases. It provides the ability to grant access to a particular release of code or to create a specific release just for outside exposure. This limits exposure of the code base to outsiders and limits access to proprietary software.

    In addition, a complete ALM solution can combine task management with access control and release management for efficient, managed outsourced development. A development manager can specify tasks for code that’s released to remote developers and manage geographically distributed developers as easily as in-house developers.

    Milestone checking

    Since outsourcing contracts typically contain service-level agreements, it’s necessary to have solutions in place to check compliance. What better way to ensure you’re getting what you paid for than to have an ALM solution tracking every project and every piece of code that’s touched by the outsourcer? IT managers can track and manage every task throughout its lifecycle and proactively manage the outsourcing relationship. The solution provides the accountability necessary to enforce the terms of the contract and to facilitate the productive use of the outsourcing resource.

    INDUSTRY EXAMPLE

    One of the world’s largest international insurance companies is outsourcing a significant number of application development projects, and is using the Aldon application lifecycle management technology to ensure all involved - IT managers and outsourced or in-house developers - are on the same solution. This means that the communication, coordination and visibility of the applications being worked on in different areas is manageable.

    With developers knowing what they need to do next and what has been done by developers around the world, duplication of efforts is eliminated and management can define and measure progress.

    Another additional benefit that this insurance house has seen is being able to track the costs of performing a particular service. The technology maintains information about the benefits that the organisation expects to receive and what they actually receive, which allays the business’ overall greatest fears – that the effort won’t pay off.

    OVERCOMING OUTSOURCING FEARS WITH ALM

    According to the London School of Economics, by 2012 over half (58%) of the average corporation’s IT budget will be spent on outsourcing. To ensure success, the requirement for improving the management of outsourced development is becoming more apparent. By adding an ALM solution to the outsourcing formula you can address the development needs of developers, IT managers and CIOs alike, as they embark on new development initiatives like Web 2.0 and service-oriented architecture. Appropriate use of the solution allows IT organisations to take advantage of the flexibility, productivity and cost savings offered by outsourcing without sacrificing management control. At the same time it will help organisations remain competitive in their quest to evolve with trends in the industry.

  • 5 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    IT executives are less likely to take advantage of the business strategy opportunities created by globalisation than c-suite counterparts according to the recent findings of an in-depth study by leading business process and IT advisory firm, EquaTerra.

    The findings have indicated a surprisingly reserved approach to globalisation from top IT executives from around the world, despite the sector continuing to benefit from substantial investment caused by its effects.

    The ‘EquaTerra Globalisation Study’, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of EquaTerra and World 50, a knowledge sharing community for C-level executives, assessed in detail the perceptions of global competition and the challenges of expanding one’s global footprint, according to over 200 leading executives and senior managers from the Americas, Western Europe and the Asia Pacific.

    The study revealed close to 90 per cent of study participants viewed globalisation as an inevitable but positive business challenge. However, IT related respondents were 14% less likely to indicate that their organisations favoured globalisation and 17 per cent less likely to see it having an overall positive effect on their company.

    Interestingly, when asked what their main concerns were for their businesses in the light of globalization, 31 percent of respondents cited cost reduction. Slashing overheads was a more pressing concern than driving business innovation, transformation and even developing new business. However, in an ominous result for the outsourcing industry, when asked how their companies planned to react to the pressures of globalisation, relatively few respondents cited moving operations to lower cost markets (29 percent) or outsourcing/offshoring (11 percent) as a primary response.

    A possible reason for the apparent outsourcing aversion felt by respondents was the perceived ‘loss of control’ experienced through the impact of global sourcing, cited by many as a major worry.

    “Whilst some of the sector’s concerns about bearing the brunt of major change are valid, the industry has also been presented with a golden opportunity to lead the way and the IT sector should really view itself as the front of the globalisation ‘arrow’ rather than shying away from the opportunities being presented” said Phil Morris, Managing Director of EquaTerra Europe. “Globalisation is a broad and multi-faceted area, often requiring expert input in order to understand and utilise it to best effect,” he continued.

    The survey was conducted amongst 217 C-level and other senior executives across 19 industry groups worldwide. 85% of respondents were from North America and Western Europe

  • 5 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    Spring Global Mail, an international mail delivery company, has awarded Logica a global contract to provide Finance and Accounting BPO services.

    Spring Global Mail is a joint venture company, formed in 2001 by three of the world’s leading postal organisations – TNT of the Netherlands, Royal Mail Group of the United Kingdom and Singapore Post. Spring provides business solutions for international business mail. Currently all Finance and Accounting (F&A) processes are run from Spring offices in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and Emmerich (Germany).

    Logica will take over responsibility for the main Finance and Accounting functions such as billing, accounts payable and general accounting. Spring’s F&A experts joined Logica in the Netherlands on June 2, 2008. Dutch employees will transfer to Logica’s F&A shared services centre in Amstelveen. The German employees will transfer to the Arnhem office of Logica.

    Logica will deliver the F&A BPO based on blended sourcing by performing activities in the most suitable and cost-effective locations whether onsite, offsite, nearshore or offshore.

    Iain McLure, CEO Spring Global Mail: “Logica provides us with the opportunity to mitigate continuity risks in our F&A process without increasing costs and with the benefit of increased quality. The contract also provides our transferred people access to a more professional F&A environment and enhances career prospects for them”.

    Paul Schuyt, Chief Executive of Logica in The Netherlands: “The contract with Spring Global Mail is key to our strategy to focus on long-term, flexible partnerships with our customers. The agreement is part of a new wave in business process outsourcing, which seeks to achieve cost savings for customers through the ideal mix of a more effective and efficient organisation, innovative technology and moving activities to countries with lower labour costs.”

  • 4 Jun 2008 12:00 AM | Anonymous

    HP’s purchase of EDS may have hit the rocks after invoking the ire of the Intermountain Ironworkers Trust Fund (IITF). The fund, based in Utah, has brought a lawsuit through Dallas-based law firm Baron & Budd, P.C. claiming that the terms of the sale agreement are unfair to EDS shareholders.

    A statement from the law firm highlights various parts of the agreement that may constitute ‘beach of fiduciary duties’ including fixing of the stock price at $25 a share and guaranteeing HP a $375m pay out if the deal does not go through.

    “This deal leaves EDS shareholders out in the cold“, said Russell Budd, managing shareholder of Baron & Budd. “They had no say in the transaction, and the company directors who are charged with protecting their interests looked the other way.”

    This move marks is the second time the proposed deal has drawn criticism in one week after EDS shareholder, Joseph Villari, sued to declare the sale unenforceable until EDS holds an auction to seek a higher price.

    However, Joe Vafi, of analyst firm Jefferies & Co., said that the current offer from H-P seems fair and that the suits won't go far without the participation of larger shareholders.

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