Synergy Extreme United Kingdom

To support human resources, payroll and pensions administration to SPVA or the Service personnel and Veterans Agency, the IT services firm CSC has achieved the £400 million agreement with the MoD or the Ministry of Defence. After the IT outsourcing specialist was criticized by Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee for its frustration to provide functional software for the unfortunate NHS NPfIT or the National Programme for IT was the time the award came.

The Capita and the incumbent HP Enterprise Services who most of the insiders anticipated in pole position to get the deal were the CSC’s competitors in the said contract. By mid-May, the deal will be signed and at this moment CSC is now analyzing and discussing together with the MoD to finalize the agreement.

Over 7 years, the deal will be worth more than to £400 million and with the privilege to extend the deal with up to 15 years, the contract will probably worth up to £750 million it was according to the original evocative documents. Hodge recommended that the CSC considers to be barred from bidding for more public-sector contracts, it was after knowing that CSC was asking for more payments to finalize its contracted work under NPfIT in December 2011.

She wrote that any private sector firm that has a little care regarding with the public interest that they are ready to obtain this type of resources from the public pocket should not be granted the right to work for the government over and over again. On the other hand, the SPVA delivers pensions, welfare, support and personnel services to their dependants, veterans and the United Kingdom Armed Forces. By bringing the former AFPAA or the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency together with the Veterans Agency the SPVA was formed.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2168364/csc-wins-gbp400m-mod-payroll-administration-contract

http://localuknews.co.uk/article/csc-wins-400m-mod-payroll-administration-contract

http://www.onenewspage.co.uk/archive.php

Down from the firm’s recent forecast of 3.7 percent increase this year, Gartner stated that the 2012 worldwide IT spending is estimated to grow by almost 2.5 percent year on year to $3.7 trillion. It anticipates the the lessened growth rate is particularly to so with the stability of the US dollar related to the other currencies, Gartner stated.

The research vice president of Gartner, Richard Gordon said that most particularly over the resolution of Eurozone sovereign-debt issues, distress about the future of China’s real estate bubble to scatter all over and influence the rest of the economy together with the increase of oil prices which is the early signs of the 2012 recommends that the global economic point of view has improved a little in spite of the ongoing concerns regarding with the global economic recovery.

It means that Gartner’s own amount manifest that the spending in key sectors is experiencing some downfall. Like the enterprise software is increasing at around 5 percent and it is down from 2011s 9.2 percent, while the IT services growth has reduced more badly from 2011s 6.5 percent to 1.3 percent.

These kind of global growth rate in spite of Gartner’s encouragement with the economic recovery overall that take into account the still striving Indian and Chinese economies and appeared strange to be embodied by the United Kingdom. By far the best user of outsourced IT services in the entire Europe, the government is also by far the biggest IT customer in the United Kingdom.

The most of the government reductions declared in 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review by Chancellor George Osborne have yet to be developed. Certainly, few of the estimates are said to be 80 to 90 percent are still excellent, that can only have a substantial impact on the IT spending and on the progressive economy where the United Kingdom is said to be flattened.

Even though it does anticipate that IT spending in the government sector will contract enough on a global basis in the year 2012 and 2013 compelled by the economic measures in the Eurozone, with Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister covering up on the IT suppliers’ costs and a cap in place on the IT spending, the Gartner’s assurance looks like disordered and lost.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2166522/gartners-spending-forecasts-optimistic

http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/it-spending-forecast/

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/gartner-optimistic-on-it-spending-technology-adoption/article3994830.ece

http://thome.postech.ac.kr/servlet/kr.co.k2web.jwizard.contents.board.boardUser.servlet.userMainServlet?command=view&client_id=pirl&handle=10&curPage=null&board_seq=418&search=&column=&catesearch=&catecolumn=

From the grip of pirates and terrorists, the Britain is pushing for a United Nations resolutions that would help pull Somalia to it. The UN Security Council experts are discussing a strategy that would see the African Union force in Somalia from 12,000 to about 17,700 troops. The UK mission spokesman stated that “it wanted to take advantage of what they see as a window of opportunity to render al-Shabab militants ineffective as a military force”. With a view to the resolution being adopted a draft resolution is expected to be circulated a day before Britain stages a major conference aimed at breaking up the business model that is used by the pirates in Somalia.

The foreign and Commonwealth Office will hosted the London Somali Conference which aims to develop a new approach to tackle the threat of piracy. The senior representatives from more than 40 governments and international organization will attend the conference.

The UK’s ambassador to the UN, Sir Mark Lyall Grant said that the purpose of the conference is to take advantage of the opportunity created by the military pressure on al-Shabab. It is by a combination of the AU force that is known as Amisom and Kenyan forces. A new state of the art global anti piracy center was unveiled today.

Analysts

REFERENCE:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9111116/30000-foreign-workers-entered-UK-under-transfer-schemes.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/uk-seeks-backing-for-somalia-action-7016633.html

http://www.silobreaker.com/uk-seeks-backing-for-somalia-action-5_2265489511913881601

http://world.topnewstoday.org/uk/article/1607723/

Because of the problems encountered by its hosting provider, Microsoft Azure, CloudStore the government’s latest launched catalogue of approved cloud services and providers for public sector organizations was offline. Throughout the time that the customers in Europe and the United States were affected, told by the spokesperson for Microsoft.

He added that by February 28, 2012 at around 5:45 PM, Microsoft turned out to be aware with regards to the issue striking Windows Azure service management in a number of regions. Windows Azure engineering groups worked out, approved and set up a fix that settled the issue for most of their customers, some customers in three sub-regions in South Central and North Europe and North Central US are still affected.

Microsoft said that there are continuing concerns of some customers, as services for the most of the affected customers were finally replaced. The corporate vice president server and cloud of Microsoft, Bill Laing set the issue down to a software error in identifying the leap year. He wrote on the Microsoft blog that the issue was easily sorted and it was verified to be caused by a software bug, the issue shows to be due to a time calculation that was inaccurate for the leap year, as the final root cause analysis is still ongoing.

Laing’s team is still trying to fix the issue however he could not give the exact resolution time. He added that some sub-regions and customers are still facing issues and as a result of that they may be encountering a loss of application functionality, however, they are working to address the remaining concerns. This is not the first time that the cloud encountered these kind of interruption.

In August last year because of lightning storms, Microsoft’s BPOS online desktop application suite and Amazon’s EC2 cloud service both experienced outages that lasted several days. Such interruptions make a case over a pure cloud strategy, told by the CEO of cloud storage provider Egnyte, Vineet Jain. He advised a hybrid cloud on-premise architecture for flexibility instead.

He added that downtime can be extremely relieved if organizations were to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy. Firms are making an insurance policy just for these situations, by keeping a behind the firewall presence and syncing that to the public cloud. Meanwhile, they can keep interruption to a minimum and guarantee their staff is as creative as possible through the emergency situation like what they have experienced. The effective way to a productive workforce for today’s enterprise is the hybrid cloud.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2156356/azure-outage-knocks-governments-cloudstore-offline

http://cloud.governmentcomputing.com/news/2012/feb/29/cloudstore-gcloud-microsoft-azure-outage

http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/public-cloud/2951/azure-power-outage-leads-cloudstore-going-line

http://www.crowsnest.tv/link/www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2156356/azure-outage-knocks-governments-cloudstore-offline

http://www.zdnet.com/g-cloud-cloudstore-knocked-offline-by-azure-outage-4010025531/

To maintain in achieving the budget cuts urged by the central government, several IT leaders coming from the five county councils located at the east coast of Britain have started the distinctive discussions regarding with the sharing network infrastructure services. At the IT Leaders Forum in London Stock Exchange, Goy Roper, the head of ICT at Norfolk County Council discussed in front of some IT bosses and he said that Essex, Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Kent County Council CIOs are gathering to deliberate where they can share IT services.

He added that apparently several county councils also do the same things, some things that they do better and some things others do better. So they would be a consumer of several services and a provider for others. By decreasing duplication while sustaining or even developing service provision to citizens. He added that the Norfolk County Council encounters cuts of about £155 million while the demand for services is increasing.

Applicable with the central government’s PSN or Public Service Network standards is the fundamental collaboration that is likely to be in disaster recovery, in assuring all county councils’ network infrastructure and procurement. Established under the last Labour government, the PSN is a public sector network of networks. Roper said that the PSN turned out very restrained after the election, however, the Cabinet Office is finally moving into adoption. But he said that no new money was prepared in the implementation.

As demand for cooperation develops between units like education services, health, police and fire, the group of five county councils could unfold to other eastern England public sector bodies. While earlier Norfolk County Council caters some services for other eastern England public sector bodies like the Fisheries Authority and the Great Yarmouth Council. Roper stated that the politics subside as soon as others propose saving money, however sometimes politics gets in the way.

The IT Leaders Forum was entitled Intelligent networking for an uncertain world and it was sponsored by BT. To talk about how they are preparing their networks for the changing needs of increased demand for consumerization, mobility and video, the IT heads coming from different sectors such as education, healthcare, media, financial services, engineering, public sector, services including construction assembled at the London Stock Exchange.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2157751/eastern-county-council-cios-network-sharing-talks

http://localuknews.co.uk/article/eastern-county-council-cios-in-network-sharing-talks

http://newinly.com/ne/c,dgocxyg,n

With a managed print services solution and a virtual desktop deployment from Ricoh, an IT services company, the Hopwood Hall College has delivered an approximated cost savings of about £500,000. The college has 650 employees and handles almost 4,000 students, they noticed that they have to seek solutions to replace its antique IT equipments and it includes some old desktops which are over 10 years older and in some cases as the students uses it it took up to 30 minutes before they can log-in to it.

The director of technology and innovation at the college, Simon Evans outlined a plan to deliver fast and easy access to all data, applications and communication services that their students needed to sustain their studies. In the summer of 2009, to utilized 200 thin-client personal computers in the college’s two renovated learning resource centers, Evans started with a pilot project.

To expand the pilot to the 1,000 personal computers that the college subsequently disposed, in that point Ricoh was then selected to deliver the support that the college needs. All over the college’s two campus locations, the project includes the establishing of the additional PCs to all departments, apart from that it implements a thin-client virtualization solution within the whole infrastructure.

Moreover with a further committed to a storage area network, it also establishes a new data center with 16 blade servers. The college also sets up a Ricoh managed print service or MPS, it has been a substitute to a collection of printers all around the college that were managed freely by each department. The managed print service consist of an Equitrac print management application and 30 Ricoh multi-function products, and it allows the college to inspect print use correctly, as the students access the printers by the use of their security passes.

The college has noticed an extreme reduction in their energy consumption and also in paper use. The deputy principal of Hopwood Hall College, John Spindler explained that the college had made a large investment in IT within the last three years, completely renewing their IT infrastructure by purchasing over £1 million on the new student personal computers, switches and servers. He added that students really thankful with the new investment as it provides them the access to all of their files and applications at all times wherever they can access to broadband.

Evans implied to cost savings to students in software license fees as an additional advantage, they have many students who need high priced business-class software applications for their courses. However, now they could prevent the cost of having to purchase the software themselves, the virtualization solution also conveys that they can access into it any time and anywhere even they use one of the college personal computers, their own unit, laptop, tablet or even their Smartphones.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2155011/college-saves-gbp500-virtual-desktop-project

http://stevengeorgia.twittweb.com/college

http://www.nextmags.com/acljohn/elearning-tools-resources-etc.#!http://www.nextmags.com/acljohn/elearning-tools-resources-etc./2012-03-10/college-saves-500-000-with-virtual-desktop-project-27-feb-2012

http://www.keycomputers.co.uk/industry-news/it-cloud-computing/college-saves-thousands-with-desktop-virtualisation/

In enhancing staff communication and decreasing travel costs, the law firm Linklaters has manifested a new video service coming from Polycom to 27 offices located in 19 countries. To enhance staff communications, increase productivity and speed decision making, Linklaters set up Polycom’s RealPresence video collaboration suites in its offices along with Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London and New York.

The law firm said that by around tens of thousands of pounds, the technology has also supported the firm to decrease its travel budgets, and at the same time, it also saves 1,900 tonnes of CO2 in its first year of use. The London chief operating officer at Linklaters, Alastair Mitchell stated the essence of flexible communication to his business.

Collaborating and communicating adequately with each other, regardless with the location is critical to their capability to come across with. Video collaboration makes it available to collaborate in real-time, face to face without having to catch a flight where productivity and valuable time is consumed. Rather than travelling to the meeting, the internal travel desk of Linklaters finally provokes staff to use the video suites.

From senior executive board meetings to client meeting and training sessions, the latest platform is managed for a wide-range of activities. The level of employees demand for the video collaboration services verifies its value to the business, Mitchell explained.

The development in employee demand for video collaboration is an evidence of the facility’s accomplishment, by way of the video suites they are able to carry out virtual meetings that recommends faster communication over key locations with additional advantages of their impact on the environment and decreasing travel costs.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2159029/linklaters-deploys-video-collaboration-service-globally

http://localuknews.co.uk/article/linklaters-deploys-video-collaboration-service-globally

http://www.congoo.com/news/addstorycomment.aspx?st=182653099&Channel_ID=-1&Category_ID=6

http://www.vcteam.ru/forum/archive/index.php/pg-2161.html

Most of the businesses have told the Government not to cut the number of foreign staff entering to the UK via company transfer or risk damaging economic growth. The CBI and British Chambers of Commerce have counsel ministers not to taper the number of vagrant workers allocate into the United Kingdom via the so-called intra company transfer route, claiming it is vital for companies to access the specialist skills they need. The Chairman of the Government migration advisory committee, Professor David Metcalf stated that “the minister should review the rules governing ICTs if they want to stick to a pledge to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands”. To fill UK jobs under the ICT scheme, new figures revealed businesses are being allowed to bring in almost 30,000 skilled non-EU workers a year which is exempt from the annual immigration cap.

The figure that has grow but the half in two years, dwarfs the 10,000 skilled employees who are being authorized general visas and who do fall within the limit. That limit means while an upper limit of 21,700 so-called tier two workers arriving in the country will easily be met, the total number when ICTs are included will be more than 40,000 around double the target. Under the ICTs last year, a major manufacturer brought in 4,000 workers, mainly from India.

Base to the CBI director for employment, Neil Carberry, “the Nitra-company transfers enable businesses to move their own staff to the United Kingdom for a limited period of time to fulfill a particular need and they underpin a lot of investment in the United Kingdom”. The Policy Director at the BCC Adam Marshall stated that the ICTS is essential to how multinational businesses operate”. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research showed that the migrants made a positive contribution to business operations through their advanced technical knowledge and skills.

Prof Metcalf suggested riaisng the £40,000 income threshold to limit the number of ICTs. David Cameron announced the plans to restrict the transfer system under which companies can bring in overseas staff. Based on the ministers only those with the salaries of more than £40,000 could stay on a long-term basis of up to five years. However, they also decided that those earning between £24,000 and £40,000 would be allowed to come for a year, paying the way for companies to rotate one employee after another on an annual basis.

REFERENCE:

http://world.einnews.com/article/83097655

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9111116/30000-foreign-workers-entered-UK-under-transfer-schemes.html

http://world.topnewstoday.org/uk/article/1686493/

After shifting its IT infrastructure from its Berlin data center that was handled by Interoute to a new London data center, YouGov, a research company will save at least £100,000 a year. The organizations have saved momentous sums by switching to its own data center told by the director of global systems operations at YouGov, Nicholas Carter. He added that the cost savings come from the added capacity that they wanted to add.

They would have had to pay an extra £10,000 to £20,000 if not more, if they were trying to execute the current system in their recent environment. Moreover, they would have had to pay £3,000 to £4,000 each month to host it, he said. To shift its core IT infrastructure, the company used Backup 5 a virtual infrastructure and data protection provider Veeam Software’s backup and replication tool.

After having several issues with its data center in Berlin, it finally made a move. Carter explained that they had a managed service located in Berlin, YouGov owned the hardware, however the hardware was handled by data center provider Interoute and they had a lot of problems with this matter. They had the necessary skillset with the IT team in London, so they planned to move their data  center there.

As YouGov had built its own data center, purchasing all the needed hardware itself the migration process took place. Carter said that they used Veeam to do a lot of the composite migration, the physical system was incomparable. They had NetApp in Berlin and they had a Dell Compellent Storage Array in London that made it hard transferring data all over, this is why they virtualized their environments and utilized Veeam to move the data.

From the end of May to July 28 this year, YouGov shifted about 30TB of data from Berlin to London. Carter added that a single virtual machine took only 8 to 9 hours to duplicate and with the use of Veeam  they replicated 40 of those machines. YouGov were also able to transfer its applications like Symantec Enterprise Vault and Microsoft SharePoint towards the new infrastructure. YouGov picked Veeam to support it in transferring its IT infrastructure as it was looking into backup software for its virtual machines, because Veeam has the tool to do that, Carter said.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2154005/yougov-save-gbp100-datacentre-migration

http://www.newzfor.me/0/381t

http://www.londonthenews.com/news/Computer+Industry/20120221/29843120/YouGov-to-save-£100-000-year-after.htm

http://www.computeach.co.uk/it-training-news-archive/february-2012

According to a conservative member of its cabinet, the somerset county councils troubled outsourcing contract with the Southwest one has stalled the authority program of cost cuts. The councilor said that southwest one a shared services venture with the IBM in which Somerset owns a 17.5% share. The Southwest One is now suing the counci8l for non-payment of fees, however after a dramatic cut in council payments predicated a succession of financial losses at the outsourcing venture.

Southwest one was stopping the council making cuts or privatising services because it refused to give up its claim for fees on services the council discontinued stated by councillor David Huxtable. He also said that every part of their organization has a part of Southwest One appended to it, whether it is buying a financial services , property advice. However, the local authorities can not afford to do all the stuff that they used to do. The conservative-led council has been trying to change its contract ever since it won power from the Liberal Democrats in the local election.

In the year 2010, the conservatives cut payments to Southwest One by 31%, their first year in power. According to its published accounts, somerset had accounted for 75% of the outsource ventures income. However by the year 2011, the council had cut payments  to supplier by over 50% or £27m. The only other council that joined the Southwest One partnership, Taunton Deane District Council cut its annual payments by just £1m since 2008. The Avon and Somerset Police, this only other public body to join the venture increased its payments by 70% or £8m. The three authorities account for the 90% of Southwest One’s revenue.

Huxtable stated that in the harsh political world it was a contract set up by the Liberal Democrats and we’ve spent the last three years trying to renegotiated it to get more flexibility in the contract. He said that they lost quite a lot of money over the last two or three years and he suspected that their current business plan is to try and charge all their clients more money to get it back.

If people looked at any of their board minutes you will find their recovery plan is pretty much predicted on trying to screw the people who are in partnership with them, on charging more of the services they provide or providing the services at a lower level at the same cost. There is only so many ways that you can cut if you are constantly losing millions of pounds.

The SouthWest one stated that its annual accounts had successfully completed the installation of an SAP system it has been anticipated. It would confirm how much money the former was claiming in its legal action. The SouthWest One is said in a statement that its legal action seeks the recovery of sums due under contract.

By the half way point it had saved just £13.5m, the outsource venture promised to save £190m for its partners over 10 years. The Somerset council stated in a statement that the disagreement was over the quality of Southwest One’s procurement service and whether the outsourcer had made enough savings to warrant charging a bonus fee. The southwest one’s accounts said that it had saved £7.6m for somerset to date.

REFERENCE:

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240162786/Southwest-One-is-blocking-Somerset-cuts-says-county-councillor