Recent Blog Posts

The demise of construction and services giant Carillion has brought fresh scrutiny of outsourcing in government. Frankly, you could find some event almost every year that brings fresh scrutiny of ...

Despite millions of pounds being spend on software to automate business processes, known as robotic process automation, some CIOs have never heard of it

An insider's view on the issues, trends and controversies around outsourcing and IT services.

The sad news that outsourcing pioneer Robert Morgan recently died is a great loss to a great many people.I was with Robert a couple of weeks ago so it was a huge shock to hear of his sudden ...

I recently met Todd Greene, the CEO and founder of PubNub. This is a company that provides a real time data network stream that allows a two way flow of real-time data. Its customers include ...

In this guest blog Joel Reid, new business sales leader at Intel Services, explains what brands and retailers need to know when specifying technology in an ever evolving world.Weighing up the ...

Last week this blog featured a guest post about Service Integration and Management (SIAM). A colleague also wrote a story about the challenges facing HMRC when it splits up its Aspire contract with ...

With the large number of different suppliers, offering IT for businesses, with trends like cloud computing and the consumerisation of IT this will increase further. Although multi-sourcing is ...

India's IT services industry has grown fast, but who would have thought that TCS is now IBM Global Services' biggest threat.That's what one management consultant told me last week. I was writing an ...

HP's decision to split the company in two, with its consumer computing and printing departments separated from its software, business servers and IT services operations.The IT giant is not shy to ...

This week Computer Weekly wrote an article about Capgemini's 2014 World Payments report.The report, which was carried out by Capgemini and RBS, does just as it says on the tin and looks at the ...

Could the creation of a tablet that business love but dare not speak its name as a corporate device be Apple's greatest gift to Microsoft?I was chatting with a contact today about the company he ...

It is hardly surprising that businesses are obsessed with data. The online activity of consumers is constantly tracked whether at home or on the move. Businesses want to know what people want and ...

Imagine all the new IT contracts up for grabs when an independent Scotland starts putting together its public bodies.Scotland shares over 200 institutions as part of the UK, which might have to be ...

In the on-premise versus in the cloud debate it is always the subject of security that swings people in favour of on-premise. People feel safer if their software is on their own premises, but does ...

The big banks are throwing money and advice at small IT firms in the digital financial services start-up sector.While there is a strong argument that investing in start-ups in the digital sector is ...

Large IT service providers are hanging around off licenses to get small IT suppliers to buy their cans of larger.Well sort of. The UK government has set lots of targets for departments to get them ...

A court case that I covered this week could bring the immigration strategies of overseas businesses into the spotlight. Intra Company Transfers are used by multi-national businesses to bring staff ...

I have written quite a lot about the new competitors in financial services. Large internet companies as well as social media giants are looking into how they can provide transactional financial ...

Cloud computing is having a massive impact on the supplier landscape. The concept of pure cloud computing would reduce the relationship between a business and supplier to something like the ...

About three years ago I met up with Vijayaratnam Tharumartnam who is a director at the Malaysian IT Initiative (MSC), an organisation supporting Malaysia in attracting foreign investment.I met him ...

Interesting move from Barclays to retrain 6,500 cashiers to enable them to help customers manage their finances rather than just processing transactions. In reaction to the explosion in digital ...

IT outsourcing has moved way beyond just cutting the cost of internal IT and now finds itself as an important mechanism for businesses to generate new business lines.Gone are the days that a ...

The latest figures from ISG show that the UK public sector has spent a lot more on IT outsourcing and BPO that the private sector over the last two years.This makes sense because the government has ...

I recently met up with Indian supplier NIIT and found it interesting to see how diverse its business strategy is, for a relatively small firm.It is always interesting to hear that some small firms ...

Outsourcing companies, including IT service providers, are an easy target for politicians when orating.Despite many of the said speakers being only too willing to get tax payers to fund their ...

You can't do anything without producing data these days. Even the morning jog is no longer a private affair but one that gives you and potentially businesses information about you and your ...

Eastern and central Europe are hotspots for IT services. There is a long legacy of IT skill in countries in the region with a lot of this related to the former Soviet Union, where these technology ...

Last week I wrote an article about the lack of take-up of G-Cloud services by county councils.This followed the results of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that less than 1% of the ...

The G-Cloud is the government's appstore, designed to make it easier for the public sector to buy software. It is also a strategy to cut the costs. There is a long way to go as the public sector is ...

Service Integration and Management or SIAM as it is referred to is in vogue. With large numbers of suppliers offering different services and a propensity for CIOs to multisource makes supplier ...

CSC is a big player in IT services yet I don't hear that much about them. It is a company that has been shrouded in controversy due to its failed NHS contract.CSC wrote off the entire $1.5bn it had ...

I was at a briefing with Truphone yesterday when it presented an update of its business, had a customer presentation and announced some research.The research is not being made public until next ...

I first met with an Indian IT supplier called Mindtree in 2010. At the time I was trying to find out more about some of the smaller IT service providers in India. One of its founders was a man ...

BPO is lagging behind when it comes to digitalisation. Two thirds of engagements are still about moving a business process to an external supplier that can do it for less, with no transformation or ...

I wouldn't normally do a blog about a senior IT executive leaving a company, but I am making an exception for BG Srinivas, who resigned his post of president of Infosys recently.BG has been a good ...

IT security teams within businesses face the prospect of protecting their systems against cyber-criminals that spend more on devising their attacks than they spend on securing them.Even the biggest ...

I have been following the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games ticketing website debacle. Last Tuesday the ticket site, run by Ticketmaster UK, went down after huge demand caused unacceptable waiting ...

I had an interesting meeting with Torben Majgaard, CEO at Ukraine based IT services firm Ciklum. He is a central figure in a movement within the Ukrainian IT that wants the IT sector to support ...

Cloud computing has been hijacked by the IT suppliers. Let's face it people have been accessing applications via web browsers for a long time. OK strictly speaking the cloud is multitenant, pay as ...

Back in the day all IT services firms were talking about the importance of increasing margins by offering services on top of services. Many years ago when I worked in the IT channel press everybody ...

Interesting story last week that two of France's IT service providers have come together in a "friendly" merger that will cut costs and probably more importantly make them more attractive to ...

I have written a few articles recently about how large internet companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter could be the biggest threat to retail banks for many of their services.Facebook is moving ...

Could cancelling Lovefilm subscriptions be the only blemish on Amazon's almost dreamlike customer services?I recently wrote an article on this blog about Amazon Web Services. The article was about ...

I was one told by someone that It suppliers have an attitude of "any news is good news." What they meant is if a journalist is writing about you in a reputable magazine it is good news even if the ...

Technology is changing. The consumerisation of enterprise IT is putting pressure on CIOs to change how they operate.So how do CIOs retain relevance in a world where business executives buy their ...

High performance computing in the cloud will make supercomputing a possibility for companies of all sizes.I have written about the attraction of public clouds such as Amazon Web Services for raw ...

Milton Friedman will be turning in his grave as a report published this week seems to imply that his laissez-faire economic stance doesn't work. The OFT's report into government procurement of IT ...

As Orson Welles in the Third Man said: "In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."Continuing the film theme, ...

It looks like the government will soon extend the Freedom of Information Act to private companies including IT suppliers to government.A recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report into ...

With all that is happening in the Ukraine it is easy to forget that the country has international businesses that need some of the government's attention.A contact of mine, Sam Kingston, is heading ...

A couple of years ago I did a series of blog posts featuring the views of experts on why large IT projects fail. I had 27 experts ranging from academics to IT services experts.I enjoyed the series ...

I met up with tier-two Indian IT services firm ITC Infotech for a catch-up on its progress in Europe. Back in June Hardeep Garewal, who is the head of Europe, told me some of the company's plans. ...

When the name Amazon comes up in a conversation with an IT services firm there is never a bad word said about the company. Amazon has become the go to company for raw cloud computing resources.Most ...

With BYOD promising so much I don't think any companies I have spoken to in the last year don't have a BYOD plan. The concept of BYOD and its benefits is easy to grasp, but putting it in place and ...

I met up with the new UK head and the outgoing head at T-Systems today to get a bit of an update.Sam Kingston leaves T-Systems today and is taking on the role of COO at Ukraine based software ...

I have been writing quite extensively recently about how traditional banks are in trouble. They are unpopular and their IT estates are out of date. In this article I wrote recently a contact said ...

I read this article recently and thought it quite interesting. It is from last July so not really hot-off-the-press, but worth noting. Indian IT services forms are constantly criticised for taking ...

The political unrest in in the Ukraine is beginning to worry major UK banks that have work carried out in the Easter European country.I was chatting to a contact who works in banking IT and he told ...

IT services providers not focussed on maximising revenue or growing deal sizes. Whatever next? John Keppel president Northern Europe at Information Services Group explains in this guest ...

The BBC is now planning its future after a ten year deal, originally with Siemens Business Services (SBS), comes to an end next year. Back in 2004 the BBC signed a massive IT outsourcing deal with ...

Like any major technological advancement the use of cloud computing will drastically change the employment landscape. In this guest blog post Kalyan Kumar, chief technologist at Indian IT services ...

Banks are haemorrhaging jobs at the moment. Only yesterday Barclays announced 12,000 cuts in 2014. IT is usually hit hard when these cuts are made. This is worsened by the fact that at the same ...

I have blogged recently about the role of IT outsourcing and more specifically offshoring in recent IT failures at banks. A contact of mine had this to say on the subject. "Most of the issues I've ...

We are hearing in financial services IT that RBS tech head Mike Errington will be a casualty of RBS's cost cutting plan, known as Project Cook.Errington is nicknamed "Offshore Errington" due to his ...

I recently blogged the views of a banking IT professional in regard the recent major IT glitches at UK retail banks such as RBS and Lloyds Banking Group. He felt that outsourcing was a major ...

Retail is one of the sectors that could benefit the most from data analytics technologies. Many are outsourcing this activity as getting the experts on-board is costly and takes time.Here is a ...

I am pleased once again BG Srinivas, now president at Infosys and tipped to be the next CEO by many, has supplied a blog post from this years World Economic Forum in Davos. In this post BG talks ...

The Post Office is looking for suppliers to provide it with IT services worth hundreds of millions of pounds.This includes back-office IT applications.Could this see the organisation look again at ...

I have been working on a feature today and going through my interviews have found some interesting stuff.This one comes from an unnamed source within banking IT. This is what he said when asked ...

The IT problems suffered by RBS recently have highlighted the task facing banks that want to modernise.I spoke to one senior IT professional within a major UK bank and although he acknowledged that ...

Interesting story about the DWP's Universal Credit IT project today. The IT project underpinning the Universal Credit is troubled to say the least. The government made a fanfare of how it was to ...

Here is another set of predictions for 2014 from the services industry. These come from Alastair Kitching, sales and marketing director at IT managed service provider Esteem Systems.Also read: IT ...

Back in December I asked for IT predictions for 2014. I have had a few in and as promised will publish them.On Friday I grouped a few into a single post here. Today's predictions come from ...

I have received some predictions for the IT sector in 2014. I asked for predictions in a blog just before Christmas and here are a few I received.They come from Steve Browell, CTO at Intrinsic ...

I blogged yesterday about how IT outsourcing has moved from being about cutting costs to more about adding business value. The Indian suppliers, who came to the table offering 40% cost cuts, are a ...

It could easily be interpreted that IT outsourcing is all about cutting costs. If at the outset outsourcing something cost more than doing it in-house it would be a non-starter. Some outsourcing ...

I met up with TCS's global head of digital enterprise, Satya Ramaswamy, last week.We spoke at length about what large enterprises are doing in the digital world and I will write up the interview in ...

It's that time of year again. A time to reflect and predict. I am always looking for guest blog posts for this blog so if you have any predictions for IT outsourcing next year, send them to me at ...

I have blogged quite a few times about Indian IT services firm Mindtree, because I am interested in what some of the smaller, lesser known suppliers are up to and what they have to offer.I recently ...

I was recently at the Agile awards in London where I hosted a panel discussion. One of the panelists was Carl Bruiners. He is an agile software development consultant and currently works at ...

I had a meeting with Alastair Mitchell, the CEO and co-founder of cloud collaboration platform provider Huddle. We were talking about the skills gap and how businesses are addressing this through ...

Electronic medical records not only promise to make doctors more efficient but could also help patients reduce their demands on the NHS. I wrote an article yesterday about some research from ...

Ed Miliband is going for the celebrity point scoring with the announcement of Maggie Philbin to head of a task force to look at ways of addressing the UK IT skills shortage. I remember Philbin from ...

I recently asked in a blog post whether we really needed another review of government IT procurement? I asked this following the launch of a review of government IT procurement by the Office of ...

Here is a guest blog By John-Paul Rooney, a partner and patent attorney who specialises in the field of consumer electronics and software at Withers & Rogers LLP.Rooney looks at how important ...

NASSCOM, the umbrella organisation representing Indian IT services firms and other multinationals, has part funded research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) looking ...

I write lots of articles about the IT outsourcing sector growing and contracting and even stagnating. Most of these articles are a reflection of the sales that are being made by suppliers. But what ...

The introduction of Real Time Information by the HMRC this year meant businesses had to comply with new tax rules. Mark Paraskeva, CEO of SME Division at IRIS Software Group, assesses how ...

The Financial Times ran an interesting interview with Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude. The interview revolved around the possibility of civil service jobs being offshored and follows the ...

With all the shenanigans surrounding IT suppliers and their clever ways of reducing their taxes it was interesting read a press release announcing the formation of a joint venture between the ...

The public sector is spending more and more on IT services as it tries to cut costs. This is changing how suppliers operate.I spoke to John Keppel, president Northern Europe at ISG, this week. The ...

Social media has caught the attention of every sector of the UK economy with public sector organisations no exception. Accenture's head of police service provided this guest blog that looks into ...

I have been following the story of sub-postmasters being charged with false accounting. I took over the story after a former Computer Weekly colleague originally picked the story up.It involved ...

The government is desperate to use more SMEs as suppliers. In IT this is particularly important for competition because a small group of large IT suppliers, known as the Oligopoly, dominate ...

HCL has given its CIO customers a platform to share experiences.I recently met up with HCL and I was told about a digital magazine the Indian IT services supplier publishes. Going by the name CIO ...

Competition makes any company up its game. Consumer facing businesses in today's digital world can't afford to give poor customer service. People find out quickly. This is a story about how mobile ...

The Office of Fair Trading has launched a study looking at government IT procurement practices. These things are ten a penny and they all make the same conclusion and nothing is done about it.There ...

Is the writing is on the wall? There have been some interesting stories lately about how UK firms are struggling to get the right IT staff and are looking overseas for them. There seems to be a ...

I was with a former EDS executive last week and he was telling me about the problems he is having sorting out the student loan for his son, who has just started university. He says the new online ...