Short takes from this week's news
Amex in managed services deal with EMC
American Express has signed a multi-year services agreement with
EMC for the management of the credit card company's distributed
storage environment, including all of its core business critical
applications and thousands of servers. Amex said it went for the
deal because it wanted more flexibility in the way it manages its
infrastructure.
Outsourcing saves 15% on average, says
report
Research examining outsourcing contracts awarded between 2003
and 2005 has disproved the widespread market claims that
outsourcing can reduce costs by 60% or more. The study, by TPI,
found that savings from outsourcing - net of professional fees,
severance pay and governance costs - average 15%. Duncan Aitchison,
managing director of TPI, said, "The promise of massive operational
savings is unrealistic."
Sun introduces slimline server
Sun Microsystems has started shipping a lower-end server using
the Ultrasparc T1 Niagara processor. At 1.75in thick, the Sun Fire
T1000 server is half the thickness of the Sun Fire T2000, making it
suitable for customers with limited datacentre space. The T1000
costs £1,900 when equipped with a 1GHz processor with six
processing cores, and 2Gbytes of memory. An operating system or
hard drive is not included.
Learning and Skills Council in network deal
The Learning and Skills Council has extended the managed service
contract for its network for a further three years at a cost of
£9.7m. The public sector agency, which is responsible for all
education outside universities for students over 16 years of age,
has 5,000 users across 54 sites. The contract with supplier Global
Crossing now includes data and video services.
Former administrator faces US hacking
charge
A former systems administrator accused of hacking into US
military computer systems fears he could end up at Guantanamo Bay
if extradited to the US, a court heard last week. Gary McKinnon,
from London, denies causing £400,000 of damage to military computer
systems in 2001 and 2002. His defence told Bow Street Magistrates'
court that McKinnon was at risk of indefinite detention if
extradited. McKinnon was remanded on bail.
DTI helps set up e-crime knowledge network
Several government departments and companies have joined forces
to help tackle cybercrime. The Department of Trade & Industry,
the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence are among the founder
members of the Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network. The DTI
has given the network £1.8m and has made a further £10m available
for research and development and technical projects.
New Look fixes IT costs with fee per
transaction
Clothing retailer New Look has extended a contract with IT
services company Accenture on different terms to the original
agreement in a bid to better control its IT costs. Under the
10-year contract extension, estimated to be worth £23m, New Look
will pay Accenture a fixed amount for every till transaction. The
supplier is guaranteed a minimum initial payment based on a set
sales volume.
Lloyds TSB offshores accounting operations
Lloyds TSB is offshoring its finance and accounting operations
to India, under a five-year, multimillion-pound deal with Xansa.
The outsourcing supplier will provide the bank with accounts
payable, employee expenses and fixed asset accounting services.
Lloyds TSB said the deal would help it to transform and standardise
its operations to provide "significant cost savings".
Brent prepares for shared services deal
The London Borough of Brent is planning to share citizen records
with its local NHS trust as part of a project to create a single
view of local people across all its systems. The London borough is
seeking a systems integrator to begin work on the project.
Manchester court hears sound of parking
fines
Manchester Magistrates Court has gone live with a speech
recognition system for handling speeding and parking fines. Using a
"virtual agent" from Fluency Voice Technology, the system, called
Payment Capture, offers the public a way to pay their fines 24
hours a day, seven days a week. The service collects credit and
debit card details and obtains real-time bank authorisation and
transaction settlement where required.