Short takes from this week's news.
N Ireland Water Service awards £70m
contract
Northern Ireland Water Service has awarded a seven-year, £70m
contract to the Xansa-led Crystal Alliance to provide a customer
billing and contacts system. The Xansa-led Crystal Alliance will
deliver front-office-to-back-office customer billing and CRM
services to the utility's 760,000 customers.
Standard Chartered Bank signs C&W deal
Standard Chartered Bank has signed a five-year IP managed
services contract with Cable & Wireless to consolidate its four
existing networks that support data, voice, and video services into
a single integrated global IP platform. The IP virtual private
network uses multi-protocol label switching as the underlying
transmission technology.
eBay joins 02's mobile i-mode service
eBay is the latest firm to optimise its website for UK users of
O2's mobile i-mode service. The agreement between the firms means
eBay users will be able to access their My eBay page to watch
auction items and make bids using an O2 phone, just like they would
on a PC. eBay has followed the likes of Egg, Universal and
Interflora in optimising its website for i-mode users.
Security attacks affect 90% of US firms
Almost 90% of US firms experienced some kind of computer
security attack in 2005, according to the FBI, with attacks costing
firms an average of £14,200. In a study of 2,000 different-sized
businesses, the FBI said 87% of companies had experienced an attack
on their systems, with 20% being attacked 20 or more times. Virus
or spyware infections were the most common occurrences. A smaller
number reported network port scans to gain access to systems, or
data sabotage.
Portal to aid lower-value government
purchasing
The government's Small Business Service has appointed BIP
Solutions to develop and manage a new opportunities portal for
lower-value (under £100,000) public sector contracts. Barry
Gardiner, DTI minister for competitiveness, said, "With more
supplier choice available in the one place, the portal will save
buyers time and effort in sourcing new suppliers, and help them
provide public services more cost effectively."
Tokyo exchange forced to increase capacity
The Tokyo Stock Exchange is increasing it trading capacity to
five million transactions from 4.5 million, after being forced to
cut short its trading day several times as the number of trades
executed neared the exchange system's capacity. Meanwhile, in New
York a computer error on the Nasdaq stock exchange led to the
posting of incorrect stock price quotes on financial websites for
much of last Thursday.
Alliance & Leicester pilots smarter
ATMs
Alliance & Leicester is rolling out self-service Personas
automatic teller machines from NCR at eight branches as part of a
pilot programme to move routine transactions away from the branch
counter. The lobby ATMs let customers deposit cash and cheques
without completing a paying-in slip or deposit envelope. UK cheques
may also be fed directly into the ATM - the receipt generated
includes an image of the deposited cheque, plus cash details.
Waterstone's turns to space planning
software
Book retailer Waterstone's is trialling space planning software
in five stores to increase shop space for its fastest-selling
titles. Waterstone's held a live trial of Galleria's space-planning
application in December. It plans to roll out the software in 50 to
70 stores this year.
Mid-Counties Co-op delays biometric launch
Mid-Counties Co-op has delayed the launch of the UK's first
retail biometric payment system until the spring. Mid-Counties,
which is the third largest co-operative society in the UK, had
planned to install fingerprint scanners in its stores last
December. Customers will have to register their identity and
banking details with the supplier of the biometric system, Pay by
Touch, before they can make purchases.
Spam still with us, despite Gates
prediction
Two years ago today Microsoft chairman Bill Gates addressed the
World Economic Forum and predicted the death of spam within two
years. Network provider Cable & Wireless said Gates' prediction
had proved true only to the extent that spam is no longer issued
from central mailboxes, but now relies on viruses to hijack
computers to send e-mails on the spammers' behalf.
DSG signs co-sourcing contract with HCL
DSG International, which runs Dixons, Currys, PC World and The
Link, has signed a multi-million pound co-sourcing contract with IT
services provider HCL Technologies. HCL will provide system
development, application delivery, infrastructure support and
maintenance services.
Oracle buys point of sale software supplier
Oracle has bought point of sale application supplier 360Commerce
as part of its continuing strategy to broaden its retail software
portfolio through company acquisitions. This latest acquisition
follows the Retek, ProfitLogic, G-Log and Temposoft purchases in
2005.
Upgrade for Marketmax merchandising system
Business intelligence tools provider SAS has launched a new
version of its Marketmax software. Marketmax 6 is an integrated
merchandising system that provides statistical forecasting,
business process design, integrated business intelligence and data
integration.
NCR suite integrates supply chain data
NCR Corporation has developed a software suite to integrate and
manage data from different devices throughout the supply chain. The
Velocity Portal aims to reduce the time needed to develop systems
for collecting, interpreting and moving data from multiple
sources.
Sun launches Retail Integration
Architecture
Sun has unveiled its Retail Integration Architecture, a set of
technologies to enable retailers to build composite applications
using SOA. Based on its Java Enterprise System and the Java
Integration Suite, the architecture is designed to reduce operating
costs by tackling typical integration problems seen with
application platforms, Sun said.