IT services and outsourcing

MPs give Post Office the cold shoulder

In this week's Computer Weekly we revisit sub-postmaster grievances with the Post Office's IT. Despite years of allegations that the Horizon transaction processing system was at fault for many accounting shortfalls, the Post Office unrelentingly defended it. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

DECC publishes annual report on delayed smart meter scheme

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has published its annual report on the roll-out of smart electricity and gas meters Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

The state of mobile back end as a service

Common mobile application services are increasingly being hosted on central back-end servers – but what does that mean for the enterprise? Continue Reading

By

• Janakiram MSV

CIO interview: Sarah Leslie, CIO, Iglo Foods Group

Sarah Leslie, CIO at Birds Eye manufacturer Iglo Foods Group, is focused on delivering simplified and standardised IT systems Continue Reading

By

• Mark Samuels

HP is ‘coming back strong’, says CEO Meg Whitman

At the HP Discover event in Barcelona, CEO Meg Whitman addressed the future for customers following HP's split into two businesses Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Danske Bank latest to take offshore IT in-house

Danske Bank is the latest company to transform its offshore IT strategy by setting up a captive centre in India next year Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

ABN Amro re-signs IBM for 10-year, multibillion-euro IT contract

ABN Amro has extended its multibillion-euro outsourcing deal with IBM by another 10 years Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

CIO interview: Kevin Cunnington, director general of digital transformation, DWP

Kevin Cunnington is responsible for making the Universal Credit IT system work - while leading the DWP's digital transformation Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Glick, Editor in chief

CGI secures communications between pilots and air traffic control

Satellite communications firm Inmarsat has outsourced the provision of security IT and services to CGI Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

How resilient is the public cloud?

The recent downtime that affected some Azure services following an update illustrates the precarious balance CIOs face in the cloud era Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Germany and the UK - Europe’s technology pioneers

Stephen Georgiadis, managing director at investment bank Altium, explores the thriving technology sectors in the UK and Germany Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Georgiadis

HP results disappoint ahead of split

HP has announced disappointing fourth-quarter earnings ahead of the company’s planned split aimed at reversing its recent decline Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Mature Indian offshore IT services firms take larger chunk of market as US giants collapse

Indian IT services firms increased their share of UK private sector IT and BPO contracts from 4% to 25% in a five-year period Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Finance regulators overlook offshoring in RBS IT failure statements

UK financial services regulators made no mention of the role of offshored IT in the problems that led to the ₤56m fine for RBS Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

EDF extends IT outsourcing contract with Capgemini

Utilities company EDF Energy has extended its IT outsourcing contract with Capgemini by another two years Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

UK government failing to break large service providers’ dominance

Large UK service providers are strengthening their grip on the public sector purse, despite efforts by the government to contract to more suppliers Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Lufthansa confirms €1bn mega-outsourcing deal with IBM

German airline Lufthansa confirms seven-year outsourcing contract with IBM worth €1.25bn Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Can Microsoft change its spots?

Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft, the company has become steadily more open and cross-platform Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Tech Mahindra backs Milton Keynes smart city project

Tech Mahindra’s telco services wing to support development and deployment of smart city solutions and IoT sensor networks Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

CIO success is all about winning friends and influencing people

If Gartner’s predictions are true, CIO working practices have to change to keep IT relevant Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Johnson & Johnson turns to AWS for hybrid cloud and borderless datacentre

Johnson & Johnson adopted Amazon Web Services to develop its hybrid IT strategy, its CTO told the AWS re:Invent 2014 conference Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Revolutionising digital public service delivery

Public sectors across the world are attempting a transition away from closed, top-down, bureaucratic, and paper-based transactional models Continue Reading

By

• Alan Brown, Jerry Fishenden & Mark Thompson

AWS launches Aurora cloud-based relational database engine

AWS launches an open-source relational database engine called Aurora at its re:Invent 2014 cloud conference Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

What to expect from AWS re:Invent 2014

Amazon is all set to unveil new services and features at its AWS re:Invent 2014 Continue Reading

By

• Janakiram MSV

Drinks maker Edrington outsources SAP enterprise resource planning operation to Atos

Glasgow-based distiller Edrington outsources its ERP development, support and hosting to IT services firm Atos Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Qantas puts Oracle ERP in the cloud with Tata Consultancy Services

Airline Qantas signs IT outsourcing services firm TCS to upgrade its Oracle ERP platform and move it into the cloud Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Ofcom launches initiative to plug SMEs' lack of confidence in communications services

Regulator Ofcom launches online portal to help business owners exploit commercial communications services Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Police forces use private cloud to access Holmes database

Police forces across the UK will access the Holmes major investigation system via a private cloud service Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

ITN deploys wireless transmission technology for breaking news

ITN introduces camera-mounted wireless transmission technology from BT to track breaking news stories around London Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Southampton university fuels research with IBM Watson analytics

The University of Southampton has begun a far-reaching initiative to redefine the future of research powered by IBM Watson analytics Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

CIO interview: Glenn Murphy, London & Capital

Asset-management firm London & Capital shifts its focus to systems that add business value, says CIO Glenn Murphy Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Interview: The IT powering animated movie-making

Video special effects require similar processing to oil and gas, but lack the budget, says head of technology at Illumination Mac Guff, Bruno Mahe Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Google joins enterprise cloud battle with additions to its cloud platform

Google made a raft of announcements at its GCP Live event, including enhancements to its networking stack and storage price drops Continue Reading

By

• Janakiram MSV

Firms at serious risk of data loss through file sharing, study shows

Businesses are at serious risk of data loss and compliance violations due to risky file-sharing practices, a study has shown Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Currency exchange business Travelex cuts HR costs by 25% with cloud IT systems

Travelex's cloud human resources (HR) project survived a budget overrun to cut costs and job recruitment times Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

Home Office appeals against $300m Raytheon payment in e-Borders dispute

The Home Office has appealed against a decision to award $300m to Raytheon over the cancellation of its e-Borders contract Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Glick, Editor in chief

Tackling bloatware in the age of cloud-based apps

Microsoft Office general manager Julia White on Office 365 security and making cloud apps easier for users Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

HMRC to save £200m per year by scrapping Aspire outsourcing deal

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) expects to save over £200m a year by moving away from its Aspire IT outsourcing contract in June 2017 Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Glick, Editor in chief

Cloud providers rush to build European datacentres over data sovereignty

Cloud providers IBM and Google build datacentres in the EU as enterprises insist on keeping their data in Europe Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

CIO interview: David Johnstone of Martin Currie Investment Management

The head of solutions management at the asset management firm discusses IT projects and the changing role of IT leaders Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

BBC takes iPlayer video production to AWS cloud to beat bottleneck and storage woes

Having run Video Factory on AWS for over a year, BBC's Robert Shield explains how he overcame iPlayer bottleneck and availability challenges Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

De Beers transforms global IT infrastructure in outsourcing deal with HCL

South African diamond company De Beers transforms its global IT infrastructure in an outsourcing deal with HCL enabling industrialised services Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Social media for communication inside the enterprise

Companies have long used social media technology such as Facebook and Twitter to reach more customers – but how are businesses using it internally? Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Local government outsourcing shrinks workforce 35%

The number of staff directly employed by a fifth of local authorities will reduce 35% by 2020 as a result of outsourcing Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Google shares down on mixed third quarter results

Google's share price dipped around 3% in response to mixed financial results for the third quarter Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Making waves at Dreamforce 2014

Love him or hate him, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff draws a crowd. This is a cloud software company with an increasing focus on application development Continue Reading

By

• Adrian Bridgwater

Cloud, frozen pizza model and the immutable infrastructure

The architecture pattern for immutable infrastructure is based on the made-to-order pizza model Continue Reading

By

• Janakiram MSV

CIOs fear poor cloud investment is making businesses uncompetitive

CIOs and CFOs fear their enterprises are missing revenue opportunities due to poor cloud strategies Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Why has HP split?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, HP has announced plans to split the company in two – we look at the reasons and assess the future prospects for the IT giant. We examine the best practice in security policy to support a bring your own device (BYOD) scheme for staff mobile technology. And we find out how one company moved its entire datacentre from Berlin to London. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Azure CTO Mark Russinovich's top ten public cloud security risks

Microsoft Azure cloud CTO Mark Russinovich identified ten key security risks of public cloud services Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Starbucks uses cloud to manage innovation and disruptive technologies

Starbucks coffee chain innovates IT strategies to hone its competitive edge using cloud services, says IT director Robert Teagle Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

The challenges facing HP as it splits in two

HP is splitting its business in two - but it is a reaction to the changing way that businesses and consumers buy IT Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Engineering company rolls out talent management software across 17 countries

Meggitt is deploying cloud-based HR technology as it seeks to integrate 60 diverse business units into a multinational operation Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

Mid-market reshoring to give UK an economic boost

A quarter of mid-sized UK firms are considering bringing offshore operational activities back to the UK in the next three years Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Barclays concludes first round of fintech accelerator

Barclays has finished the first round of its financial services technology (fintech) startup accelerator, following a demo day Continue Reading

By

• Clare McDonald, Business Editor

Oracle OpenWorld 2014: Lloyd's Register goes mobile with Oracle

Lloyd’s Register Group tells delegates at the Oracle OpenWorld 2014 conference how it developed a mobile working application for clients and staff Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Vtesse bought by Interoute in major fibre expansion

Acquisition adds 7,000km of fibre infrastructure to Interoute’s European network Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Oracle Openworld 2014

Every September, San Francisco plays host to Oracle’s user conference, where customers, users and developers descend on the city to learn the latest on the supplier’s products and services. Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Oracle OpenWorld 2014: Xerox aligns business and IT in streamlining applications

Xerox's IT division has been working with the business to standardise its HR management on a global basis Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Nationwide roll-out of Universal Credit to start in early 2015

Controversial welfare reform programme to be accelerated nationwide for single people only, using much-criticised IT systems Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Glick, Editor in chief

Almost three-quarters of big companies to increase outsourcing

Investments in outsourced services will increase at almost three-quarters of global businesses Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Hacking IT from the inside

In this week’s Computer Weekly, car giant Daimler talks about its IT security strategy and the benefits of having its own in-house hacking team. App developers are under fire for collecting too much personal data – we examine the latest best practice. Our new buyer’s guide looks at virtualisation backup. And our review of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 tablet asks whether it can replace the laptop. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Case study: Deutsche Post DHL develops software contract templates to reduce costs

Deutsche Post DHL has created contract templates to manage software costs. Computer Weekly speaks to the people leading the initiative Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

BlackBerry Passport delivers a real keyboard and high-res screen to business

BlackBerry has introduced its Passport smartphone featuring a 4.5in hi-res screen, a qwerty keyboard and 13MP camera Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

The digital CIO: Why embrace digital innovation?

Having the right digital strategy can make or break an organisation Continue Reading

By

• Peter Thornton

Google to build giant '40-football pitch' datacentre in the Netherlands

Google will invest €600m to build a giant, 120-megawatt datacentre in the Netherlands Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Demystifying Kubernetes: the tool to manage Google-scale workloads in the cloud

We are witnessing a new technology wave in the form of immutable infrastructure and micro-services Continue Reading

By

• Janakiram MSV

SAP acquires Concur to build cloud-based expense management

SAP has agreed to acquire online travel and expense management SaaS provider Concur Technologies for $8bn Continue Reading

Asia dominates as outsourcing location and India remains unrivalled

India is still the best place for businesses to outsource services and is unrivalled in its scale and availability of skills Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Interview: Government digital chief Mike Bracken on the next five years

The Government Digital Service celebrates its third anniversary soon, but has plenty more challenges ahead to change Whitehall thinking Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Glick, Editor in chief

Government digital chief signals move away from 'tower model' approach to IT outsourcing

Government digital chief Mike Bracken has signalled a move away from the “tower model” approach to IT outsourcing Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Glick, Editor in chief

KPMG: IoT, 3D printing and healthcare IT to have most impact

Internet of things (IoT), 3D printing and biotech or healthcare IT are among the IT trends that will change the way people work and live Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

TechUK tasks future government with making the UK a digital leader

TechUK has launched a digital manifesto detailing how the next government must turn the UK in a digital leader Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Salesforce issues advice on avoiding Dyreza attack

Salesforce has issued a set of guidelines on tightening security after a number of its customers were targeted by the Dyreza email virus Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Clarks shoes steps into digital

Shoe manufacturer Clarks is replacing its legacy e-commerce sites with a global cloud-based system next month Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

The digital CIO: ‘Fear of Google’ and the ethics of digital business

Could the big digital players be using their dominance by exerting unfair competition? Continue Reading

By

• Brinley Platts and Peter Thornton

EY seeks tech startups to address challenges of right to be forgotten

Professional services firm Ernst & Young is looking for startups to find technology solutions to the ‘right to be forgotten’ regulation Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Tobacco giant outsources IT to Wipro

Philip Morris International has outsourced IT infrastructure management to Indian services firm Wipro in a five-year deal Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

BP spends £2m developing apps to train business leaders

BP is scrapping online courses in favour of apps and portals that can deliver bite-sized information and training when it's needed Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

How cloud is saving lives

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at how the power of public cloud is helping scientists to tackle diseases such as cancer and malaria. Big banks are turning to tech startups for innovation – we ask why. And our latest buyer’s guide examines micro-datacentre technologies. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

King's College, UCL and LSE back £900,000 national datacentre project

A consortium of universities, including LSE, UCL and King's College, is backing a national datacentre for academics Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

EasyJet sheds 'scrum' image with hybrid IT

EasyJet’s reservation system could not provision for allocated seating, so the airline added a feature on Azure Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

'Bungled' Army 2020 IT recruitment contract loses £70m of savings

Mismanaged IT contracts lead to further setbacks in Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Army recruitment drive Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Nude celebrity hack forces changes at Apple and 4Chan

Apple and image-sharing site 4Chan take security measures after celebrity iCloud accounts were compromised and photos leaked Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

How Sony Music used Google cloud for One Direction’s 1D-Day event

Sony Music and its digital agency AIS London adopted Google Cloud Platform services to handle One Direction's day event Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Apple and FBI launch iCloud hack investigation

Apple and FBI investigate the breach of Apple’s iCloud causing fresh business concerns over cloud security Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Why bare metal cloud is in vogue

Bare metal services have been around since 2009 but cloud is witnessing renewed interest in it thanks to new offerings Continue Reading

By

• Janakiram MSV

Watermelon SLAs – making sense of green and red alerts

Often IT SLAs don’t reflect the real service and service experience of users. They also aren’t focused enough on the business results Continue Reading

By

• Barclay Rae

Rolls-Royce CIO joins HMRC as non-executive director

Rolls-Royce CIO Simon Ricketts has been appointed non-executive director of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Former bank chief launches financial trading app

A trading social network on Apple’s App Store hopes to attract more than 100,000 consumer traders as members by the end of 2014 Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Spanish bank spends €500m on contactless ATMs

CaixaBank has commissioned Fujitsu to build 8,500 ATMs that will be contactless Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

FT turns to cloud to manage advertising bookings

Business newspaper replaces 20-year-old ad-booking system with a cloud-based service Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

Government major projects watchdog needs more powers, says MPs

Major Projects Authority needs stronger powers to improve project delivery across government, say MPs Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Raytheon wins £224m from Home Office over e-Borders cancellation

Tribunal says Home Office unlawfully terminated a contract with Raytheon Systems Limited over its e-Borders programme Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

What ingredients go into the successful app store?

An enterprise app store should provide the controlled availability of apps for employees.We look at what is available for organisations to use Continue Reading

By

• Bernt Ostergaard , Quocirca

Nike builds datacentre cloud and network infrastructure

Nike is creating a scalable next-generation datacentre cloud and retail network infrastructure using Juniper's MetaFabric architecture Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Home Office pours £3.8m into shared service for biometric cards

The Home Office has awarded a £3.8m contract to Thales for a service to support the production of Biometric Residence Permit cards Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Government breaks grip of IT oligopoly

Figures for public sector software and IT services investments reveal a dwindling share for IT giants, but can the oligopoly be removed? Continue Reading

George Osborne launches fintech innovation programme

Chancellor George Osborne launches a programme designed to put the UK at the forefront of financial technology (fintech) innovation Continue Reading

By

• Clare McDonald, Business Editor

Cabinet Office COO Stephen Kelly takes Sage Group CEO role

UK accountancy software supplier Sage appoints Cabinet Office chief operating officer (COO) Stephen Kelly as CEO Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist