Short takes from this week's news
UK firms lack IT quality measurement
policies
Less than half of large UK companies have a formal policy to
measure the quality of internal IT operations service and delivery,
according to a survey by research firm Coleman-Parkes for Dimension
Data. The study found that this lack of investment contributes to
significant system downtime, equating to 235 hours a year for the
average UK company. The survey questioned 214 senior IT executives
from the UK's largest 750 firms.
Microsoft to launch CRM 3.0 in December
Microsoft will release its CRM 3.0 package in early December,
after releasing the public beta of the product last week. New
features include marketing automation facilities and a service
scheduling module. The new version is also more tightly integrated
with Office and the company's SQL Reporting Services, so users do
not have to rely so heavily on third-party tools.
Major Linux Kernel upgrade is released
Linux Kernel 2.6.14 has been released - a major upgrade of the
software that forms the core of many enterprise Linux products. New
features include native support for Wi-Fi running on Intel's mobile
Centrino platform, plus better support for hardware connection
technologies such as Infiniband, USB and SCSI.
British Library books to be digitised by
Microsoft
The British Library and Microsoft have announced a deal to allow
the software company to digitise 25 million pages of the library's
books. The scanned books will be made available on the library's
own website, as well as the MSN web portal.
Autonomy to buy rival search engine Verity
Search engine provider Autonomy is to acquire rival Verity for
£282m. Autonomy said it would offer the Verity business search
products as an integrated component of the Autonomy Intelligent
Data Operating Layer architecture.
Croydon uses SMS to send air quality alerts
Croydon Council is using an SMS gateway to pilot a service
called Airtext. It enables the council to send residents
information on air quality to their mobile phones. Airtext aims to
benefit people with asthma, bronchitis, emphysema and heart
disease.
BAA uses Vignette for its web
infrastructure
The British Airports Authority is using content management and
portal software tools from Vignette to overhaul its web
infrastructure. The organisation, which operates seven UK airports,
said the project was part of its information lifecycle management
strategy and would enable it to become an "agile enterprise".
Bupa deploys Teradata datawarehouse
Healthcare provider Bupa is to use a Teradata enterprise
datawarehouse to help reduce IT infrastructure complexity and
costs, and improve customer service. Phase one of the project will
provide a single operational system to produce management and
operational reports. Phase two will concentrate on making
information available to Bupa's business-to-business operations,
and phase three on delivering information to consumer-facing
teams.
IBM and Sun support document standard
IBM and Sun Microsystems are attempting to boost support for
Open Document Format (ODF), an open source file and document
sharing specification. ODF competes against Adobe's PDF and
Microsoft's fledgling XPS format. ODF is supported by the
Openoffice productivity suite, Sun's Staroffice 8 collaboration
software and IBM Workplace.
Microsoft to buy Swiss VoIP company
Microsoft is to acquire Swiss voice over IP company
Media-streams.com to help boost its unified communications
platform, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server. The Zurich
company develops VoIP-based communications applications that fit
with the technologies Microsoft is already developing with its Live
Communications product.
Value of internet sales rose by 81% in 2004
The value of internet sales by businesses rose to £71.1bn in
2004, an increase of 81% on the 2003 figure of £39.3bn, according
to the annual e-commerce survey published by the Office for
National Statistics. Some 6.7% of businesses sold goods and
services over the internet in 2004, compared with 5.4% in 2003. In
addition, 35.3% of businesses made purchases over the internet in
2004, up from 29.4% in 2003.