Industry news

BAE Systems Detica have been select as the preferred bidder for delivering a service management integration framework (SMI) by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

The contract, which is expected to be signed over summer, will see the selected supplier managing FCO’s range of suppliers delivering services to more than 260 estates around the world, delivering to more than 1,400 employees. As the supplier BAE will also seek to drive efficiencies and reduce costs through system improvements.

The global framework contract is expected to be worth as much of £80 million over the six year contract length.

Managing Director of BAE Systems Detica, Martin Sutherland, said that BAE was looking in the coming months: “to deliver a solution for the FCO that allows the organisation to achieve dynamic resilience in its IT infrastructure across the world.”

BAE and Vodafone create security product partnership

A NatWest spokesman has revealed that the fault which made key customer services unavilable to millions on Wednesday 6th of March for a number of hours, was due to a mainframe hardware fault.

The mainframe error effected customers of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank, stopping users accessing online banking service, cash machines or from making payments.

The inability to access services brought back memories of a three day service outage effecting RBS services in June 2012. However the two similar incidents are not connected according to RBS.

The impact of the service disruption seems to have varied from customer to customer, with some users still being unable to access services on the following day.

A RBS spokesman said: “This problem was caused by a hardware fault and was not related to the issues we experienced last summer.”

RBS say offshoring services to India were not responsible for IT outage

Pakistan has begun construction on its end of a natural gas pipeline between Pakistan and Iran. The 2,775 km long pipe valued at $7.5 billion is expected to be completed within the next two years, with the Iranian side of the pipe nearing completion.

The pipe itself is expected to help Pakistan deal with energy demand, with the country’s energy infrastructure frequently failing to provide stable power or prevent blackouts.

The construction project has been met with opposition from the U.S. which has asked Pakistan to exit the project.

India had originally been involved in the early stages of the gas line project but has since pulled out, with a signing of a nuclear deal with the U.S. pre-empting the pull-out.

Pakistan has also been approached by other parties including Saudi Arabia and the U.S. with alternative energy solutions.

Pakistan’s Allied Bank outsource mobile finance to American Sybase

Four train companies have begun legal action against the government for costs incurred during the procurement process for the Great Western rail franchise.

The scrapping of the procurement process following a move by the government to re-evaluate the bidding process in light of the public sector failings behind the West Coast mainline, resulted in bidders losing millions.

FirstGroup, Stagecoach, Arriva and National Express have moved to undertake legal action against the government in a bid to recoup losses, with the government being potentially liable for as much as £40 million in costs.

The government has played down the issue of legal action in the past, with Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin saying in January: "In keeping with the relevant invitations to tender, which made clear that bidders are responsible for their own costs, the secretary of state does not believe it would be appropriate to reimburse bidders."

The success of legal action is further called into question with the bidding tender itself detailing that:“Each bidder shall be responsible for all costs, expenses and liabilities incurred by it in connection with the Great Western franchise letting process, whether or not its bid and/or associated negotiations are ultimately successful or the process is subsequently varied in any way or terminated."

The BBC has revealed that legal proceedings are expected to hold until the end of March, in order to allow for the offer of compensation.

Report says basic errors tore apart West Coast rail franchise

BT having successfully won 100 percent of all superfast broadband contacts as part of the Government’s EU funded move to modernise the UK’s infrastructure, are creating 1,000 new jobs.

The telecoms giant's investment in new staff is focused on supporting individuals who have recently entered the job market, as well as the unemployed, with 400 of the new positions being two year minimum apprenticeships, while 200 of the jobs will be aimed at ex armed service employees.

Prime minster David Cameron said: “I warmly welcome the announcement from BT. Working with business, the government is driving a transformation in UK broadband services and with an extra 100,000 homes and businesses gaining superfast broadband availability each week, this is already taking shape.”

BT secures a further two superfast broadband projects

Systems integrators who had traditionally delivered up to 80 percent of public sector IT work are heavily cutting prices in order to compete with the G-Cloud.

The G-Cloud is being promoted by the government as the key to significant cost savings across departments by introducing competition and the cross-sharing of information in order to drive savings.

The system integrators which had traditionally enjoyed an effective stranglehold on government department IT contracts are now attempting to entice departments from turning to cloud services with discounted rates and by matching prices offered on the cloud service.

Director of the G-Cloud Programme Denise McDonagh has criticised the cost reduction: “That makes me furious for two reasons. One, you should be moving to a different way of buying and reducing your dependency on the big SIs. But it makes me more furious that an SI can either deliver that service a lot cheaper than they previously said or they are taking a loss.”

Public Cloud market to increase by $20 billion in 2013

The London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSE) move to acquire a majority stake in cleaning house LCH is expected to generate millions of pounds in savings.

The deal for a 57.8 percent stake will allow the two businesses to share and condense IT systems. Cross sharing operations between the two groups is expected to be able generate savings of as much as £21 million per year.

The control of LCH will allow LSE to increase the diversity of its clients and overall market share in addition to the cost savings generated from the sharing of services.

“Together, we see significant revenue opportunities opening up as a result of both customer and regulatory demand for more efficient and more sophisticated tools to manage market risk”, said LCH Clearnet CEO Ian Axe.

UK tech investment at highest levels in a decade

The European Outsourcing Awards (EOAA) announce the shortlist

The shortlist for the 2013 European Outsourcing Awards has been announced with the shortlisted companies re now positioned to win at the upcoming ceremony in Amsterdam on April 25th at the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky.

The European Outsourcing Association Awards and Best Practice Showcase Shortlist:

BPO Contract of the Year

• CBRE Global Corporate Services

• Centrica - WNS, EXL & Genpact

• DLA Piper UK LLP

• eClerx Services Ltd

• Infosys BPO and Orange Business Services

IT Outsourcing Project of the Year

• Aletea SPA

• DLA Piper UK LLP

• EPAM System Inc

Outsourcing Service Provider of the Year

• 60k Ltd

• CBRE Global Corporate Services - Corporate Outsourcing Ltd

• HCL

• Luxoft

• Sitel

Outsourcing Advisory of the Year

• Bird & Bird LLP

• CMS

• eClerx Services Ltd - Reviewing Captive Operations

• Elix-IRR

• Olswang

Offshoring Destination of the Year

• Russia (Luxoft)

• Serbia (Sitel)

• South Africa (BPeSA Western Cape)

Outsourcing End-user of the Year

• Momentive

• National Rail Enquiries

• Smiths Medical

Award for Innovation in Outsourcing

• Capgemini BPO

• eClerx Services Ltd - Zero Budget Outsourcing

• HML

• Software Improvement Group

• SPi Global

• Sykes Global Services and Genworth

Award for Corporate Social Responsibility

• Avasant

• Capgemini BPO

• Centrica

• Teleperformance EMEA

Award for Best Multi-sourcing Project of the Year

• 60k Ltd

• Centrica - WNS, EXL & Genpact

• National Rail Enquiries

Outsourcing Works - Award for Delivering Business Value in a Pan-European Outsourcing Project

• Aletea SPA

• Capgemini BPO and Coca-Cola Enterprises

• eClerx Services Ltd - Global Parts Selector Launch and Expansion

• eClerx Services Ltd - Streamlining Billing

• Genpact

• Infosys BPO and Orange Business Services

Outsourcing Works - Award for Delivering Business Value in a Single European Outsourcing Project

• Aletea SPA

• eClerx Services Ltd - 4P Exploratory Analysis and Forecasting Simulator

• Sitel and John Lewis

• VFS

• Wipro Technologies - BPO

Analysts from Gartner & IDC will debate the future of sourcing in Europe. Presentations will come from The Dutch Chamber of Commerce, Alcatel, Centrica and more.

The European Outsourcing Association is the centre of excellence for outsourcing in Europe. It’s focus is on communicating strategic lessons of outsourcing, whilst highlighting the successes it can bring.

Further information can be found here.

A report by the Defence Science Board has highlighted vulnerabilities within the U.S. military to cyber-attacks and portrayed a poor picture of the countries capabilities and resilience to respond to a full scale cyber-war.

The report based on an 18-month study of U.S. military systems success in defending against cyber-attacks, found that service would be lacking in the face of a protracted attack by an organised force.

The report highlighted that military infrastructure design information had already been compromised, revealing weaknesses and undermining the stability of core systems, due to the use of components and software in the public eye or from foreign suppliers.

The report said: “Military Commanders may rapidly lose trust in the information and ability to control U.S. systems and forces".

Solutions by the U.S. military were also found to be inadequate, being numerous in number but failing to cohesively developing security. The report recommended that the U.S. military needed to move to develop offensive capabilities in order to deter coordinated foreign-state initiated attacks.

China may seek to ‘control the internet’, US report on web hijack warns

G4S is moving to sell its US government solutions business as the global security service provider seeks to offload the business in the face of budget cuts.

Despite a turnover of near £400 million in revenue from the business in 2012, G4S has placed the business on the market, with analysts placing an expected sail price of £80 to £120 million.

The government solution business, which includes services including, weapons training, emergency services and mine detection, has been impacted by U.S. defence cuts.

G4S has also citing its position as a non-U.S. company as being detrimental to its business interests and preventing the company from having access to secure information which inhibits the services it can deliver. The company will move instead to concentrate its U.S. focus on low level security clearance business.

G4S looks to draw line after failed contract with compensation settlement