Short takes from this week's news
ID cards high priority for Labour third
term
ID cards will be a "major plank" of the Queen's speech if Labour
is returned to power, Alan Milburn, Labour's general election
co-ordinator, has said. Early reintroduction of the scheme, which
will rely on biometric ID cards and a central population database,
has the backing of the prime minister and home secretary.
Atos downgrades rail settlement storage
plan
Atos Origin has chosen a consolidated storage system for the
£4.1bn Rail Settlement Plan, run on behalf of the Association of
Train Operating Companies. The originally anticipated 14Tbyte RSP
archive has been replaced by a 700Gbyte searchable archive from
Sand, which will enable high-performance and complex analytics on
15 years' worth of mission-critical data using the Sand Analytic
Server.
SMEs place onus for spam filtering on ISPs
Internet service providers should take responsibility for
filtering spam e-mails and viruses, 77% of small businesses
believe. Sixty six per cent of the small firms surveyed by
Checkbridge said they would be willing to pay between £1 and £2 a
month for filtering services. Some 8% would pay £5 or more per user
per month, the survey of 11,000 SMEs and consumers revealed
Threshers places drinks order with JDA and
E3
Specialty drinks retailer Thresher Group has combined a JDA
Portfolio Merchandise Management System-I and Advanced Warehouse
Replenishment by E3 to manage the inventory that flows from its
seven warehouse locations to nearly 2,000 nationwide stores.
Thresher Group wanted to eliminate the problems often associated
with a "pull" method of distribution, where stores including
Threshers, Wine Rack, Victoria Wine, Bottoms Up, Huttons and Drinks
Cabin ordered from a product catalogue on a weekly basis.
ALG to monitor BA's flight profitability
British Airways has signed a contract with ALG Software to
analyse and report on the profitability of its flights. The
software uses an activity-based costing methodology to calculate
the costs and profitability for different routes. It is accessed
via the web and a Windows-based PC-client application.