Recent Blog Posts
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Computer Weekly Editor's Blog
Is this the most remarkable government statement on IT yet?
If any of the big, incumbent Whitehall IT suppliers have not yet done so, they really need to read this web page. It's part of the new Government Service Design Manual, launched earlier this week by Whitehall CTO Liam Maxwell - it is effectively a guide for how to select, purchase, design and run IT across...
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Inside Outsourcing
Can Dell learn from HP's mistakes in the IT services sector or will Ross Perot be the only winner?
When HP acquired EDS it had a plan to become a global leader in IT services. HP realized that the future was not in the PC and server markets where commoditisation and cut throat competition was pushing prices down.Dell has realized this and is now transforming itself into a services firm. It now wants to ...
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Computer Weekly Data Bank
4 in 10 businesses plan to hire more IT staff in 2013
Demand for IT professionals is set to grow in 2013, a worldwide survey of businesses and IT professionals by CompTia reveals. The proportion of companies planning to hire IT professionals has grown from 24% last year to 39%. At the same time there has been a slight fall in the number of companies pla...
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WITsend
Learning from football maestros
This is a guest blog from Sean Farrington, UK managing director and RVP Northern Europe of QlikTech. If you're a football fan, you'll no doubt be aware of the latest news from the world of football; Sir Alex Ferguson stepping down as long-serving Manchester United manager; Roberto Mancini, manager o...
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When IT Meets Politics
Tell UKIP that it holds the key to the future of EU Network, Information and Cyber security
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Let me explain why UKIP MEPs (and their allies in other member states) may well determine the future of EU Internet regulation and what is at stake if they do. I have attended a number of recent meetings on the EU Cyber Securi...
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Open Source Insider
Fedora 'Pidora' now optimised for Raspberry Pi mini-computer
The Raspberry Pi mini-computer is to be served with new "Pidora" build of Fedora packaged for ARMv6 architecture. NOTE: Fedora is a free and open source Linux-based operating system sponsored by Red Hat -- it is typically classed as the second-most commonly used Linux distribution, after Ubuntu. This new b...
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Computer Weekly Editor's Blog
If the PC is dead nobody told Lenovo
Apparently we are in the post-PC era. The PC is dead. Deceased. Pining for the ffjords. Ceased to be. An ex-market. But nobody seems to have told Lenovo. Look at the latest quarterly sales figures.PC revenues in Western Europe fell 16% in the first quarter of 2013. PC sales at HP fell 20%. At Dell, profits...
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CWDN
SAP hires autistic software testers and programmers
SAP is working with software testers and programmers who sit on the autistic spectrum. Known for their often heightened sense of analytical awareness and perception, people classified with an element of autistic behaviour could have untapped potential in software application development and testing. SAP is...
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Inside Outsourcing
Smart metering project delay a sensible move?
I blogged last week about the fact the GB smart meter implementation programme (GB SMIP) has had its target of having smart meters in UK homes has been put back a year.According to Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) the target for the introduction of smart meters in homes by the summer of 2014,...
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CWDN
Programmers to embed video conferencing deeper into real life
At some point during the 1900s (or thereabouts) what we used to know as video conferencing became known as presence, telepresence, or even immersive telepresence if you will. Telepresence is in fact much the same video conferencing but carried out with the support of high-end "codecs" to enable users to sp...
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Computer Weekly Data Bank
Computer Services Spend - General Insurance Companies
General insurance companies of all sizes spend dramatically more per employee on computer services than do UK organisations overall. Large general insurers' outlay is over £12,000 per staff member whilst the national value is £1,500. For the very small concerns the respective expenditure is ove...
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Downtime
Printing cookies
Downtime has nothing against eating healthily in principle - in principle - it's just that all the things that taste so good rarely seem to be calorie-light or good for the arteries. And, as an office-dweller, Downtime is all too familiar with the chain effect caused when the person next to you starts eat...
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Downtime
Throatwobbler Mangrove
The twitterverse has whipped itself up into a Hyacinth Bucket storm of indignation after the creator of the Graphics Interchange Format or 'GIF' protested that his invention is actually pronounced 'Jif'. Despite the, err, evident 'guh' sound in the first word of the acronym. Inventor, Steve Wilhite, said:...
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Inside Outsourcing
Will Capita O2 deal trigger a strike after union warning?
Last month the Communication Workers Union (CWUs) announced that it intended to take action if stories about O2 transferring jobs to Capita, as part of an outsourcing deal were true. An article that appeared in the Sun in April suggested O2 call centre jobs would transfer to Capita as part of a deal ...
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CWDN
Where are all the real cloud toolkit technologies?
Not enough companies are talking about the guts of cloud mechanics. Areas we need more detail on include the implementation of automation controls, new security considerations for cloud environments, the real world deployment of governance layers -- and, crucially, application provisioning, scaling and int...
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Inside Outsourcing
Should businesses cut their losses and bring offshore IT back to the UK?
Offshoring IT made sense ten years ago because labour costs in countries such as India were so much lower than the UK. But is this still the case?In this guest blog post Andrew Holley, founder partner at Holley Holland argues that some businesses with offshore operations should cut their losses and come ho...
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Open Source Insider
Intel's Android mobile chipset play embraces ARM
Intel has released a new set of development tools for the Android Jelly Bean mobile device operating system called Beacon Mountain. Beacon Mountain version 0.5 is only compatible with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean NOTE: The Jelly Bean flavour of Android comes in line after Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbre...
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When IT Meets Politics
Main obstacle to SMEs going on-line IS security - OU Survey
Last week I received the report of the latest Open University Business School Quarterly Small Business Survey . This has been running since 1984 using the same methodology and therefore has a unique provenance.The special topic for this survey was SME use of mobile and web-based services. It contains some ...
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WITsend
Learning business in an IT World
This is a guest blog from Nikki Briant, Insurance Analyst at Cognizant, who reflects on her experience over the last six months as a graduate entrant. In my last post, I had just joined the graduate scheme at Cognizant, the global IT services and consultancy firm, within its insurance department. Six month...
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Quocirca Insights
Is Cisco = HP + Ericsson? Developing End-to-End DC Solutions
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Inside Outsourcing
Satyam Timeline: From tragedy to fairytale.
I interviewed Mahindra Satyam last week and for the first time since it was hit by a $1bn internal fraud in 2008 it was confident enough to say it has now recovered and will push for growth. I spoke to Roger Newman, who heads up a UK business unit, at Mahindra Satyam.He said the company is ready to draw a ...
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WITsend
Finding the right woman for the job
In this guest blog Lesley Cowley OBE, chief executive of Nominet, discusses how the UK needs to encourage more girls into the IT sector in order to foster the next generation of IT talent. It's a sad yet common misconception that the UK IT industry is a "man's world". Unfortunately, the statistics a...
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Open Source Insider
How to keep sexism out of open source
Any number of surveys will give you broad brush summary stats detailing the dearth of women in professional IT roles. Computer Weekly has long sought to champion the wider redress of this imbalance and has regularly covered a number of women in IT initiatives and news threads. It is therefore interesting t...
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Computer Weekly Data Bank
Telecom Services Spend - Post & Courier Organisations
Post & courier organisations with 1000+ staff spend only £80 per employee on telecom services. Smaller sized concerns have outlays considerably larger with companies employing 50-99 staff expending nearly £1,200 per worker.Source: IT & Telecom Spend - 80 Industry Sectors (www.kewassociates.co...
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Inside Outsourcing
Who are the top outsourcing advisories?
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) recently published the results of its research identifying the world's best outsourcing firms.One part of this focuses on outsourcing advisors. I think the number of CIOs that outsource without taking independent advice must be pretty much z...
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Public Sector IT
DWP drops agile from flagship government software project
The Department for Work and Pensions has dropped a coalition government scheme to avert software disasters from its £2bn Universal Credit programme.The DWP gave up using the "agile" method of software development for Universal Credit, the coalition government's flaghsip reform programme, last month.It had ...
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CWDN
The cloud developer's toolkit takes shape
It's official. The software application development discipline now extends to a wider definition and the cloud software application developer has arrived. Call him (or her) a 'cloud developer', call him a 'service-based computing programmer', call him a 'hosting coder' or call him Software-as-a-Service App...
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Quocirca Insights
Next generation MPS: From Big Paper to Big Data
Paper-based information is not often thought about in today's Big Data picture, which tends to focus on the proliferation of unstructured data from sources such as blogs, social media and video that is growing at exponential rates compared to traditional enterprise data. Yet paper documents are an importa...
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Inside Outsourcing
Is outsourcing the answer to IT innovation?
I recently blogged asking the question: Can you outsource innovation? In this guest blog post Matt Cooper, CEO at Imaginatik, tells us why the answer is yes. In fact he thinks outsourcing could be the answer.This is interesting because one of the biggest criticisms of outsourcing is often that there is no ...
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Computer Weekly Data Bank
System Software Spend - Top Manufacturing Sectors
Beverages & tobacco manufacturers with 1000+ employees spend over £1.2m each on system software. This is 40% more than large transport equipment makers. They in turn have an expenditure which is twice that of pharmaceutical manufacturers.Source: IT & Telecom Spend - 80 Industry Sectors ...
