The most recent articles from IT Week

CIOs confused over how to calculate carbon footprint

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-08-08T16:25:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 8 August 2008 at 16:25:00

Fujitsu Services survey finds lack of advice on what CIOs should be included in carbon footprint

Chief information officers (CIO’s) are split on whether outsourced IT operations should count towards an organisation’s total carbon footprint, according to a Fujitsu Services survey.

While the majority of the CIOs preferred to count outsourced IT operations as part of their carbon footprint, almost a quarter believed the opposite and wanted the contracting company to become responsible. The survey was of 100 CIOs in UK companies employing more than 1000 people.

Fujitsu Services, as a provider of outsourcing services, said industry leaders should work together to agree common standards for calculating carbon footprints.

“This research suggests that many are erring on the side of caution, preferring to double-count rather than risk understating environmental impact,” the Fujitsu Services report noted.

IBM heads to the cloud

Gareth Morgan — 2008-08-01T13:24:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Friday 1 August 2008 at 13:24:00

Big Blue to build £180m datacentre to host cloud computing services

IBM has confirmed it plans to start offering cloud computing services, which will be housed in a £180m datacentre it is building in North Carolina.

The new facility will also be the testbed for IBM's green datacentre plans, and will be the first one to incorporate its state-of-the-art design principles aimed at making IT more energy efficient.

"This new datacentre is part of IBM's commitment to construct the world's most advanced datacentres," said Bob Greenberg, general manager of IT optimization, in a statement. "We open for business in late 2009."

The new facility will replace existing buildings on IBM's Research Triangle Park site in North Carolina with a 60,000 datacentre, packed with energy-efficient kit and designed to allow additional modules to be built on.

The building will use a mixture of air-, water- and fresh-air-cooling to ensure an optimum operating temperature, delivered in the most energy-efficient manner.

IBM has yet to confirm what services it will offer from the facility.

Accenture to help firms go green

David Neal — 2008-07-23T12:29:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Wednesday 23 July 2008 at 12:29:00

Suite of services from Accenture designed to help firms analyse their green initiatives

Global services giant Accenture today announced a new suite of tools aimed at helping firms better assess their energy consumption and efficiency.

Announcing the suite Steve Nunn, global lead for Green IT at Accenture, said, the new tools would provide organisations with "much-needed insight into their power consumption and environmental footprint". "By implementing the specific, tailored green recommendations, organisations can achieve measurable environmental improvements that contribute to bottom line savings," he added.

The Accenture Green Technology Suite lets firms assess where they sit within a so-called "green maturity spectrum". Once an initial assessment has been carried out, the suite then identifies areas where savings could be made.

The suite also features comprises a number of different elements: a Green Maturity Model, a Data Centre Estimator, and a Workplace Estimator.

The first of these asks the user some 300 questions about their working practices, their office environment, data centre, procurement and corporate social responsibility activities. Once this is completed Accenture will rate the firm on a scale of nought to five, depending on their activities.

Meanwhile, the Data Centre Estimator will be used to provide an idea of the environmental and financial impact of a firm's server farms. Again it results in a number of suggestions, recommending how and where energy can be reduced. For example, Accenture said that changes could be made to a firms' air conditioning, server, storage, or networking components tio enhance energy efficiency.

Finally, the Workplace estimator can be used to develop policies for the energy efficient running of existing and new office equipment. The company said the web-based tool will be is used by Accenture consultants to identify the impact of PCs and other office equipment and develop a roadmap for firms to help bring down their energy usage.

A better deal for the environment

Matthew lake — 2008-07-18T12:33:00.000Z

Matthew lake, IT Week, Friday 18 July 2008 at 12:33:00

The new head of corporate information systems at the Environment Agency talks about his career and how he plans to make government IT procurement greener

Simon Pitt thinks he has got the greatest job in IT. “What could be better than working for an organisation whose mission is ‘to create a better place’. It’s just the best objective ever,” he said.

Pitt became the new head of corporate information services at the Environment Agency in May, taking charge of a department comprising about 500 staff and with a budget of tens of millions. The Environment Agency is the largest organisation of its kind in Europe. It employs 12,000 people, most of whom work in its headquarters in Bristol, with the remainder spread across dozens of regional and area offices. Set up in 1995, it has an annual budget of £900m that it spends on a wide range of schemes that together aim to protect and improve the environment of England and Wales.

The agency’s work includes flood prevention programmes, anti-pollution initiatives, wildlife conservation projects and carbon trading schemes. Given all the good work the organisation does, it is easy to understand Pitt’s enthusiasm.

“Everything I’ve ever done has worked up to this. I’ve always had this ethos to try to improve life for people,” he said.

Pitt had plenty of scope to satisfy this urge to make a difference at one of his earlier postings. As director of information management at London Underground between 2002 and 2005, he was in charge of an IT overhaul that aimed to make the company a far more customer-centric organisation.

“When I joined London Underground I was given about 18 months to transform what was a very back-office and fragmented IT function into something that was focused on delivering a service to the people who ran the railway and the customers who used it,” Pitt said.

One of his main aims was to turn data held in London Underground’s 500 asset databases into useful information. “The goals were to deliver real-time service information to customers and minute-by-minute management information to the people running the railways,” he said. “We used a mix of ETL [extract, transform and load] tools, data marts and web technology to extract key bits of data, turn it into useful information and deposit it where someone could view it.”

The first stage of the project involved hooking up all the stations to a network. Unbelievably, when Pitt joined LU in 2002 most stations still did not have a networked PC. “Information was communicated from line control to stations by telephone. It could take an hour for information about a disruption to be passed on from the controller to the last station in the chain, by which time the incident would probably be over,” he said.

To further improve access to information, Pitt implemented a wireless network and deployed mobile devices to front-line staff.

Underpinning all this was a change of culture in the IT function. “We turned the department into a team that really understood the railway and was absolutely committed to delivering a better service and being an integral part of the business,” he said.

Improving services through better access to information is also one of Pitt’s key tasks at his new job. As part of the Environment Agency’s ongoing More, Better, Faster programme for IT, he is looking to improve knowledge sharing throughout the organisation.

“We’ve got lots of databases around the place but it’s a case of being data rich but knowledge poor,” he said. “We’ve got to improve this very rapidly. I’m working with the various operations within the agency to work out their priorities in terms of information needs, and working with the data management and knowledge teams to drive this forward.”

Pitt said his efforts to improve knowledge management are a vital component of the agency’s response to Sir Michael Pitt’s final report into the 2007 summer floods.

Published at the end of June, the Pitt Review is the culmination of a year-long inquiry that examined the emergency response to last summer’s flooding and investigated how the country can reduce the risk and impact of floods in the future.

In his formal response to the report, Environment Agency chief executive Paul Leinster stressed the urgent need for the country to learn lessons from the events of last year. “Last summer’s floods highlighted the urgency of adapting to the potential effects of climate change to protect lives, property, the economy and the environment. It’s clear that we are going to face less predictable weather and more extreme events such as flash flooding,” he said.

One of the Pitt Review’s main recommendations is that the Environment Agency should assume a strategic overview role for all types of flood risk in England. This new remit, which is enshrined in the government’s proposed Floods and Water Bill, is driving a range of data-sharing, forecasting and modelling initiatives at the agency. For example, this month the Environment Agency and the Met Office began piloting a new service to forecast and warn emergency services and critical infrastructure providers about extreme rainfall that could lead to surface water flooding.

The agency is also looking to integrate data from 110 of the Met Office’s real-time rain gauges into new, more detailed river forecasting models, which should lead to more timely flood warnings being issued and better decisions by flood forecasters.

The ability of the agency’s IT team to deliver these and other important innovations, such as new carbon trading and asset management systems, is closely tied up with what Pitt described as his number-one priority: the successful completion of “the most sustainable green government IT contract ever”.

Announced last December, the £750m 10-year contract will see a leading services provider take over responsibility for the Environment Agency’s day-to-day IT needs.

Pitt said the deal, which is on schedule to be completed by the end of the year, will leave him at the head of a smaller but more responsive in-house team that will concentrate on “providing and managing the strategic, business-focused aspects of IT”.

But the extent to which the move improves the agency’s ability to meet its strategic goals will not be the only measure of its success. Indeed for Pitt, there is a far bigger prize up for grabs.

“The deal will have very clear objectives for sustainability and green IT,” he said. “We will make sure the provider we appoint is absolutely committed to rolling this type of contract out both down through its supply chain and into its other outsourcing contracts.”

Pitt said he wants nothing less than to permanently embed green principles into all outsourcing procurement agreements. “If we can get the contract right and cascade it throughout the government sector it would be a real coup. And if we can get our outsourcing partner to put in standard green terms that it will then use in its private-sector contracts, then the benefit from that would be absolutely huge,” he added.

Pitt said the Environment Agency will work with the Cabinet Office’s Green IT Working Group to try to roll out the contract model throughout Whitehall and beyond. This task will join other initiatives through which the two bodies are seeking to promote greener business practices.

“We are working with the Green IT Working Group to develop top tips for reducing carbon emissions and balance score cards so people can measure their progress,” Pitt said. “We are also doing similar things with the BCS, Carbon Trust and Intellect.”

Not surprisingly, consideration for the environment is hard-wired into the agency’s working practices. “Sustainability and environmental impacts are factored into every business contract that we write,” Pitt said. “Also, we measure our mileage and ensure staff optimise their work patterns. On top of that, we use virtualisation and power-management software to try to reduce the impact of our systems.”

For Pitt, green business is simply good business. “Most of these things improve efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce cost. Any hard-nosed business should be looking to do this,” he said. “The key is to take simple steps, save some money and then reinvest those savings into more sophisticated solutions. If you can get that virtuous circle going you can constantly and consistently drive your green credentials up, while also saving money, and improving the condition of your IT and the services you are providing.”

Firms think twice before outsourcing

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-07-17T11:35:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Thursday 17 July 2008 at 11:35:00

Unsettled business climate means outsourcing relationships could be in for a shakeup

Chief information officers (CIOs) have been warned of an impending shake-up in IT outsourcing relationships triggered by today’s unsettled business climate.

The global economic downturn is making business leaders more cautious, said National Outsourcing Associaton (NOA) board director Mark Kobayashi-Hillary. In some cases, this means that decisions on IT outsourcing projects are being delayed, he added.

This argument was backed by Duncan Aitchison, European president of sourcing advisory firm TPI, which tracks outsourcing deals signed by large enterprises. “The firms that have been taking action have only been cutting projects so far,” he said.

Christian Hesselhoj from outsourcing consultancy Global Outsourcing eXchange said he had noticed businesses are taking longer in their decisions to offshore. “Where a decision used to take three months, it is now taking about six,” he said.

While Aitchison said most outsourcing activity would pick up again in the near future, he predicted the level of application development outsourcing was likely to be much reduced.

He added that UK firms are now more likely to go down the offshoring route than opt for UK-based outsourcing providers.

By eliminating the need to transfer staff, firms are able to sign shorter contracts and reduce their overall liability, Aitchison said. The average length of outsourcing contracts signed by UK companies “is now five years rather than seven”, he added.

The choice of offshoring destinations is also increasing, with new entrants such as Egypt spending millions of dollars in an effort to compete with India as the outsourcing destination of choice, Kobayashi-Hillary said.

Egyptian government body The Information Technology Industry Development Agency said Egypt has 31,000 science and engineering graduates and the costs to do business with an Egyptian service provider are 10 per cent lower than with an Indian provider.

Meanwhile, the UK government is planning an overhaul of the rules governing public-sector IT sourcing. A statement from the Cabinet Office issued this week advised that future government outsourcing contracts should only be awarded to providers that guarantee to preserve trade union recognition.

Environment Agency leads the way to greener IT procurement

Matthew Lake — 2008-07-11T12:07:00.000Z

Matthew Lake, IT Week, Friday 11 July 2008 at 12:07:00

New IT chief reveals plans to use outsourcing deal to promote sustainable government procurement

The Environment Agency has this month entered the final short list phase of a £750m IT outsourcing deal that it plans to use to promote sustainable procurement practices across the government sector.

In an interview with IT Week, the Environment Agency’s newly appointed head of corporate information services, Simon Pitt, said his main objective is to come up with the most environmentally sustainable government IT contract ever, which could then be used as a template for all future public-sector outsourcing procurement deals.

“We are designing the contract with the hope that other government agencies and departments could benefit from it, especially around the area of sustainability – but we still need to define the parameters for this,” Pitt explained. “Possible options range from government bodies and agencies joining this contract, to using the principles from our contract as the foundation for setting up their own contracts with similar terms and conditions. We will discuss these options with the Cabinet Office’s Green IT Working Group and with the three suppliers that we have short-listed.”

Pitt said that negotiations were ahead of schedule and had now entered the detailed dialogue stage. He added that the agency should be able to reveal its final choice of service provider by the end of December.

“If we get the contract right and cascade it throughout the governement sector, it would be a real coup,” he said.

Details of the 10-year deal were first revealed at the close of 2007. It will see around 170 IT-related jobs transfer to the chosen service provider, which will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the Environment Agency’s systems.

“My priority is to ensure that we get the best value possible, that we meet our sustainability goals and that we can offer the adaptable, flexible and agile IT that the Environment Agency, our customers and partners need in the future,” Pitt said.

Europe makes 36 per cent of world's outsourcing deals

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-07-03T10:36:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Thursday 3 July 2008 at 10:36:00

Everest Research publishes report on outsourcing and offshoring world trends

Europe made 36 per cent of the outsourcing transactions in the first quarter of 2008, according to a new report on global outsourcing by analyst firm Everest Research.

The financial sector contributed to 14 per cent of the transactions signed during the same period, dominated by a number of large deals signed by banks, brokerage firms and mutual funds.

The credit crisis is causing “increased impetus for offshoring”, noted the report, but also “potentially longer lead times for deal closure”.

New locations are emerging as offshoring destinations, including Thailand, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, the report said.

Meanwhile, the managing director of business process outsourcing firm Convergys, Sukant Srivastava, dispelled problems reported by the British public relating to poor customer service from offshore centres.

The reports are because of poor execution by a number of smaller players that just “jump into” the industry without much experience or a long term agenda, he said.

Srivastava argued that customer service in call centres could only be improving. “Every year operators are better equipped to speak to customers because the Indian industry has been transforming through a rapid growth of cell phones and credit cards,” he said.

Srivastava also pointed to strategies Indian business process outsourcers can employ to ensure good customer service. Firstly, tier three cities that have relatively slow growth, such as Bhuvaneswar and Trivandrum, should not be used for outsourcing voice related processes, only back office functions, argued Srivastava.

Also, customer satisfaction surveys should be ingrained into call centre services, he explained. “For example, we have an independent US team that carries out email surveys and live call surveys to get feedback on what c ustomers like and what opportunities there are to maximise their experience.” he added.

The “after call notes procedure” that tracks customer contact with the call centre can be voice automated so the call centre agent does not waste time typing out notes, said Srivastava, and an analytics technical platform that allows agents to analyse customer information ensures agents provide proactive care.

Dell launches storage consulting services

Dave Bailey — 2008-06-25T16:08:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Wednesday 25 June 2008 at 16:08:00

The vendor will offer guidance on backup, restore and disaster recovery issues

Dell has launched new storage consulting services aimed at businesses of all sizes.

Dell's storage alliances manager for global infrastructure consulting services, Stephen Davies, said, "What we're launching today is consulting for tiered storage offerings, backup, restore and stabilisation systems, and also for creating a well-designed disaster recovery plan. We're also offering a managed remote backup service, built on the backup and restore offering."

The new consulting services stem from Dell's acquisition of UK-based The Networked Storage Company last year, and the partnership it formed with GlassHouse Technologies in March.

"Where we think there is a clear advantage is in the lower end corporate accounts and SMB sector, where a lot of people want to do this stuff, but haven't been able to do it properly," Davies said.

Case study : Council speeds its way to convergence

Dave Bailey — 2008-06-23T13:38:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Monday 23 June 2008 at 13:38:00

Faced with a looming deadline, Oldham Council needed a telecoms provider that could accomplish a swift migration to IP telephony

Oldham Council recently upgraded its telephone system, replacing separate voice and data connections across its various sites with a modern IP telephony system. The council also faced a challenging timescale in which to make the transition, owing to the impending expiry of its current managed service contract.

Oldham Council covers 55 square miles and employs 10,000 staff who service a population of over 219,000 people. In early 2004, the council started work on upgrading its voice and data network infrastructure across all its sites, with the aim of delivering a robust, scalable IP network for staff, visitors and the general public.

Responsibility for what would eventually become a full rollout of IP telephony fell to David Honeywell. Originally head of IT support for the council, he was transferred to an organisation called the Unity Partnership as programme manager. Unity is a joint venture involving the council and business services group Mouchel, with another private company Agilisys acting as the main ICT subcontractor.

Oldham’s existing telephone system was based on an Ericsson MD110 PBX, delivered as part of a five-year managed service contract. However, during the lifetime of this system, the council had invested in IP telephony on a piecemeal basis, introducing technology from communications provider Mitel wherever it was seen as appropriate. “There were some parts of Oldham Council’s business where IP telephony became a valid approach, so we were rolling out the odd Mitel controller here and there for specific remote sites,” said Honeywell.

It was then decided that the council should implement a converged solution to replace its existing infrastructure before the managed service contract ended. “About 18 months before the five-year managed service contract was due to expire, we looked at various options and decided there was only one choice and that was to extend the Mitel solution we were already deploying to cover the rest of the network,” Honeywell added.

The council put together a request for a tender that was sent to five Mitel Gold partners, of which three responded. Of these, only communications services specialist Bailey Teswaine said it could deliver the project within the required timeframe, which turned out to be a lot shorter than was originally envisaged.

“The formation of the Unity Partnership kept getting delayed, and was not completed until May 2007 very close to when our five year managed service contract was due to end,” explained Honeywell. This meant Bailey Teswaine had only five weeks to deploy the new system before the PBX service contract was due to expire. “Bailey Teswaine put their money where their mouth was they said we can do this and you will not need to sign an extension to the managed service,” said Honeywell.

Quality of service

During the rollout, 75 Cisco switches were commissioned by the Unity Partnership to deliver quality of service across the 29 main telephony node sites. These were a mixture of 24-port and 48-port Cisco 3560 and 3750 models with power over Ethernet capability.

The upgrades took place out of hours and before deployment of the Mitel infrastructure. As part of the rollout, nearly 100 obsolete Cisco, Bay Networks and Netgear switches and hubs were swapped out, and cabinets and cabling were stripped out and re-patched.

About 2,500 extensions had to be migrated from one platform to another during the rollout. “We’re predominantly a Cisco house, but we also had a smattering of legacy equipment that was incapable of running voice over IP over the Mitel infrastructure,” said Honeywell.

Most of the council sites had 10/100Mbit/s connections, while the core network is gigabit Ethernet. The Unity teams ran tests to ensure that the bandwidth and performance across the network was adequate. “We were fairly familiar with the Mitel solution since we’d already rolled it out across a number of remote sites, so we knew what bandwidth was required. That was the key reason for going with Mitel we wouldn’t have to check whether it would work,” said Honeywell.

Management of the Mitel IP telephony system is quite dispersed, but the main administration site is located at Oldham Civic Centre, while there are 60 Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) controllers managing voice traffic across all schools, libraries, social services sites, and other local authority buildings.

“Some of the larger schools have their own controllers so they’re using them to manage their own telephony network on site. Some benefits from the rollout are that all the calls are routed back to the central site to take advantage of corporate telephony rates and also free inter-organisation calls,” said Honeywell.

Savings and efficiencies

Honeywell said the project has led to significant savings. “One of the biggest challenges in the public sector at the moment is driving through efficiencies, and one of the largest potential savings is through economies of scale,” he added. Going forward, one of Unity’s key goals is to enable more flexible and remote working.

“We’re testing handsets running over people’s home broadband connections and we’re also trialling contact centre agents working from remote locations,” said Honeywell. “As a result of the rationalisation, we have people who are hot-desking, and they need to be able to seamlessly migrate from one office to another easily. An extension of the telephony system to their mobiles would be something we’d be very interested in.”

For Honeywell, the most satisfactory part of the project was that it became a collaborative venture with Bailey Teswaine, with the Unity Partnership almost matching the firm in the number of staff dedicated to completing the work.

“The stark choice was between signing an extension to the managed service, which was not particularly palatable, or throwing every effort we had behind the IP telephony migration,” he said.

Honeywell added that he was personally grateful that Bailey Teswaine stuck to its commitment. “I remember being sat in a meeting and all heads turned towards me when someone asked, ‘Can we do this?’. Looking at our partners, I said we could, and after that it was a case of my neck on the block.”

Offshore code-checker passes value test

Gareth Morgan — 2008-06-19T15:27:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Thursday 19 June 2008 at 15:27:00

Diplomacy is key to successful offshore application testing, argues AppLabs’ chief executive

Amid the hype and hullabaloo that have accompanied the meteoric rise of Indian outsourcing providers over the past decade, there have been two constant features dampening some of the enthusiasm: wage inflation and high staff turnover. In the high-tech campuses that have sprung up on the outskirts of many of India’s cities, it is not unusual for the brightest and best workers to be able to walk across the road and get a 30 per cent pay rise.

But Makarand Teje, the recently appointed chief executive of Indian-based application testing firm AppLabs, thinks he has a handle on the problem, and can thus shield his customers from unexpected hikes in services costs. Application testing, he confided, is different; attrition rates at AppLabs are well below the Indian industry average and pay inflation is under control.

In truth, the main thing that sets application testing apart from other outsourcing functions is that compared with white-hot sectors such as software development or business process outsourcing, it can appear somewhat humdrum. When it comes to recruitment, Teje acknowledged that AppLabs has to target the second tier, but he is adamant that this does not result in second-rate service.

“We’re careful to manage expectations, but then also build around that with career planning and emphasising people management skills,” he said. For example, staff are encouraged to have regular one-to-ones with others in their team even if those team members are located on the other side of the planet. Social events, such as days out to watch the cricket are encouraged.

Such paternalism has helped minimise staff attrition but its main benefit comes in client relationships, said Teje. “Customer engagements require some delicate negotiations: it’s not an easy thing to do to comment on someone else’s code. Having those additional soft skills is an important part of our customer relationship,” he added.

One of the criticisms frequently levelled at outsourcing arrangements is that too many focus on the technical issues and not enough attention is given to the interpersonal relationships that will make them work. This is doubly true of application testing, said Teje.

To many business leaders, software development can appear to be something of an arcane art: the very best developers create elegant and functional applications, but the creative process can be somewhat opaque. And often these artistes expect to be treated with a certain reverence testing their code can require the skills of a diplomat.

Consequently, AppLabs’ focus on enhancing the soft skills of its employees helps them engage with their customers, making sure that not too may feathers get ruffled, explained Teje.

And as the process of software development evolves and new techniques such as agile development, where projects are delivered in small increments of functionality, come to the fore, so the relationship between developers and testers also changes. But the changes play to AppLabs’ strengths, insisted Teje. “We’ve got a history of introducing best-in-class processes to software testing, bringing in more measurement,” he added.

For some, that may mean the prospect of outsourcing the testing to India is too daunting. “In those cases we have the capability to deliver on-shore,” explained Teje. “We have test centres in both London and Preston, so if customers are more comfortable with that, we can work with them.”

Teje also hopes to make a virtue out of his company’s independence. AppLabs offers testing capabilities for all major software development environments, including IBM Rational and Borland. So for those companies that are outsourcing their software development, having a third-party tester brings benefits akin to the relationship between a finance department and their auditor, said Teje. “They both have the skills to do a similar job but the auditor adds a stamp of authority.”

So while Teje is proud to be part of the Indian explosion redefining the IT industry, he is also happy to be distinct from it.

Informatica launches new SaaS integration capabilities for business users

Rosalie Marshall in Las Vegas — 2008-06-04T11:46:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall in Las Vegas, IT Week, Wednesday 4 June 2008 at 11:46:00

New tools improve functionality of SaaS platform

Data integration specialist Informatica has announced a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, which allows business users to integrate their off-premise data - managed by cloud computing vendors such as Salesforce.com with their on-premise data.

The new software will be particularly useful for sales and human resources staff, said Informatica. “Business users can now use data integration as simply as they can use consumer web sites,” said Sohaib Abbasi, Informatica chief executive.

A presentation was shown to Informatica World conference attendees to demonstrate how the new Data Loader Service works. Users can transfer data from one application to another with a few clicks and key word inputting. The data is then automatically transferred in the cloud.

“It is cloud computing to cloud computing using cloud computing,” announced Abbasi.

Users will also be able to access the Data Loader Service and transfer their data from an iPhone, he added.

NetSuite buys professional services firm

David Neal — 2008-06-02T15:57:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Monday 2 June 2008 at 15:57:00

NetSuite has bought on demand services firm OpenAir for $26m

On demand software firm NetSuite has acquired professional services automation software developer OpenAir, saying that it will help it increase its cloud-based, online offerings.

NetSuite has agreed to pay $26m for the firm and will continue to invest in the development of its product lines, it said in a statement. All OpenAir employees are expected to continue in their current roles, the firm added.

Both firms' solutions will be integrated and offered over the internet, and, Zach Nelson, chief executive at NetSuite explained, will greatly improve the range of services the firm is able to offer.

“OpenAir is the leader in on-demand Professional Services Automation Software, and its customers absolutely love the products. We are excited about leveraging OpenAir’s industry knowledge and customer insight to create the next generation of cloud computing business applications for Services Management,” he explained.

“The Services Industry is one of the fastest growing in the world, and the combination of NetSuite and OpenAir will enable us to accelerate our time to market and deliver a feature-rich, fully-integrated, on-demand suite specifically designed for time-and-project based companies.”

Nearshore outsourcing locations increase in popularity

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-05-30T16:07:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 30 May 2008 at 16:07:00

New research published by the National Outsourcing Association shows major outsourcing trends

Nearshore locations are growing in popularity as outsourcing destinations, according to new research from the National Outsourcing Association (NOA).

Martyn Hart, chairman of the NOA, said as Europe has grown to encompass more states, central European countries have begun to trust destinations such as Romania and Bulgaria more with outsourcing projects. “For reasons such as data protection and common currency issues,” he said.

The NOA surveyed 50 plus delegates attending the European Outsourcing Association summit held this month. The delegates were a mix of: those who have, or are considering outsourcing; companies which fulfil outsourcing contracts; and legal and consultancy service companies that support the industry.

59 per cent of respondents believed Romania and Bulgaria are more attractive to work with than the countries once were, while only 9 per cent said the attraction had been reduced.

“Eastern Europe holds benefits because they have a good education system,” added Hart. Although most Indians hold English as their second language, Hart dismissed this as an attraction, pointing to another NOA survey undertaken recently. This showed only 4 per cent of the British population (based on a sample of 1000 people) felt they receive good service from Indian call centres.

However European nations do not have the scale of staff to pose a threat to outsourcing industries belonging to their Asian and South American counterparts, said Hart. While the majority of survey participants- 58 per cent- believed different geographies are suited to different types of outsourcing projects. Only 17 per cent of those questioned said Indian providers are leaps and bounds ahead of other geographies.

The majority of those surveyed - 75 per cent - also believe a major Indian player will soon acquire a large European or American provider. This was particularly because of the increasing industry trend towards consolidation.

“The most significant thing for me is the growth in the mega mergers,” Hart said. “There will be more utility type organisations and more EDS and HP type deals,” he suggested.

When predicting the type of provider the larger Indian outsourcing players, such as TCS, Wipro and Infosys, will look to acquire, Hart mentioned Cap Gemini. “Although Cap Gemini is not as strong in the States so it could be CSC [Computer Science Corporation],” he added.

“Indian providers will acquire for market share and for want or consultancy services,” Hart concluded.

Better services deals in the offing

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-05-30T10:50:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 30 May 2008 at 10:50:00

At next week's Gartner summit, IT managers will be advised to expect more for less from outsourcing

Delegates at the Gartner Outsourcing and IT Services Summit taking place in London next week will be told to expect more for less when it comes to negotiating outsourcing deals.

Speaking ahead of the event, Gartner research vice president Claudio Da Rold said that business leaders could take advantage of “turbulence” in the outsourcing market to wring better deals out of suppliers.

He added that clients are already becoming more outcome driven when negotiating contracts, and the global economic slowdown, coupled with rising energy prices, was driving IT chiefs to demand higher-value outsourcing deals for lower costs.

A new Gartner survey of 316 European professionals involved in outsourcing found that 65 per cent of respondents believe managing the performance of their service providers is their most critical management issue. It also revealed that 44 per cent of respondents were considering changing outsourcing providers – indicating the pressure that suppliers will be under.

Cost cutting remains the primary driver for outsourcing for 53 per cent of respondents. This focus is also persuading businesses to explore alternative delivery models, including software as a service and cloud computing, said Da Rold.

He cited the example of hosted email services as indicative of the change under way in outsourcing. “While the average price for a corporate hosted email account on [Microsoft] Exchange is about £3, Google charges only £2, and other firms are investing heavily to find a way to deliver email for only £1,” said Da Rold.

Business leaders are becoming less concerned about getting customised services if they can get generic alternatives delivered at much-reduced rates, he added.

CBI advises on services ups and downs

David Neal — 2008-05-29T11:56:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Thursday 29 May 2008 at 11:56:00

Confederation of British Industry releases its latest services survey

According to a new survey from the CBI IT services firms are already feeling the credit crunch, with profitability staying flat for business to business companies.

The CBI's Services Sector survey, released this Tuesday, found that firms selling professional services to businesses, it uses examples including IT and recruitment firms, saw business volume grow, but at a much lower rate than last year. The average selling price for services, traditionally rather profitable say the CBI, was 'flat', but firms offering IT, marketing and telecoms fared slightly better than others.

Ian McCafferty, the CBI’s Chief Economic Adviser said, "Services sector firms are concerned about their business prospects..

"There are some exceptions though. Marketing firms are going from strength to strength and the telecoms & IT sector has seen a run of strong profitability growth."