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Business applications

June 29, 2012 29 Jun'12
Key HMRC IT plans delayed due to spending freeze, says NAO

Key HMRC IT plans have been delayed because of the Cabinet Office’s moratorium on spending, the National Audit Office (NAO) says
June 28, 2012 28 Jun'12
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude vows permanent rein on IT spending

The government will keep a permanently tight rein on spending controls, says Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude
June 27, 2012 27 Jun'12
Microsoft hikes software costs by four times for some charities

Specialist charities such as housing associations face paying nearly four times as much for Microsoft software due to licensing changes.
June 27, 2012 27 Jun'12
Windows 8 in the enterprise: From tablet to desktop PC

During the Windows preview day in Amsterdam, Microsoft explained how it plans to change the way everyone uses computers in its so-called "beautiful experience"

June 27, 2012 27 Jun'12
RBS set to sue supplier CA Technologies for software failure

Reports claim RBS is gearing up for legal action against US software supplier CA Technologies over the technical fault that crashed accounts
June 27, 2012 27 Jun'12
Microsoft presses the case for Windows 8 in the enterprise

In the second day of its annual TechEd developers conference in Amsterdam, Microsoft presented the case for Windows 8 in the enterprise
June 26, 2012 26 Jun'12
Cambridge University turns to computer games to unlock secrets of the universe

Cambridge University is turning to technology developed for computer gaming to help it solve some of the fundamental problems of science
June 26, 2012 26 Jun'12
Whitehall must measure progress of IT strategy, says IfG

Whitehall must measure the progress of its IT strategy more effectively to achieve its transformation agenda, says the Institute for Government (IfG)
June 26, 2012 26 Jun'12
Cambridge University targets businesses with commodity supercomputer services

The University of Cambridge is offering businesses supercomputer services built on commodity Intel chips
June 26, 2012 26 Jun'12
Amazon delivers high-performance computing applications from Ireland datacentre

Amazon debuts a computer cluster at its facility in Ireland to support European high-performance computing (HPC) applications

June 26, 2012 26 Jun'12
CIO interview: Adriana Karaboutis, global CIO, Dell

It is one thing being CEO of a company with best-in-class supply chain. But what happens when the business refocuses? We talk to Dell's CIO.
June 25, 2012 25 Jun'12
Government slashes SAP and Microsoft spend by £150m

The government expects to slash licence and maintenance spend with Microsoft and SAP up to £150m by 2015, via a framework renegotiation.
June 25, 2012 25 Jun'12
CA Technologies works with RBS on technical fault as outage enters fifth day

Software supplier CA Technologies is working with RBS to fix the software glitch that has caused a five-day outage
June 25, 2012 25 Jun'12
RBS enters fifth day of software failures

After a weekend of the RBS and Natwest outage, accounts are still not back to normal for banking customers
June 22, 2012 22 Jun'12
Software glitch to blame for RBS and NatWest online banking outages

The software glitch behind the outages at RBS and NatWest banks could carry on through the weekend, preventing cutomers from buying online
June 22, 2012 22 Jun'12
Government Procurement Service tenders for £1bn IT services

The Government Procurement Service has published a £1bn tender for IT services
June 22, 2012 22 Jun'12
Post Office launches external review of system at centre of legal disputes

The Post Office has launched an external review into the Horizon computer system at the centre of a legal dispute with sub-postmasters
June 21, 2012 21 Jun'12
NHS Trusts tender for £300m clinical systems

Some 29 NHS Trusts across London and south England have issued a framework tender, worth £300m, for clinical information systems
June 21, 2012 21 Jun'12
The future of Autonomy – one year on

Recent moves to subsume Autonomy into HP have lent increasing irony to the name. Nearly a year after the £7.1bn acquisition, we examine Autonomy's future
June 21, 2012 21 Jun'12
Halliburton CIO Ken Braud on strategy and innovation

CIO Ken Braud talked to delegates at the Orange Business Live customer event in Rome, and it was clear he has plenty on his plate.
June 21, 2012 21 Jun'12
Banks break with in-house software in move to commercial systems

Increased regulation, reduced profits and customer demands are driving banks to replace home-grown software with off-the-shelf alternatives
June 20, 2012 20 Jun'12
Wimbledon site gets redesign on IBM cloud

The Wimbledon website has been redesigned on IBM’s SmartCloud for the 16 million visitors expected to access the site during the tennis tournament
June 20, 2012 20 Jun'12
Testing becoming ingrained in software development

A survey of software testing capabilities has revealed a dramatic increase in the number of organisations embedding testing into the software development process
June 20, 2012 20 Jun'12
Enterprises increase software application spending to $120bn in 2012

Global spending on enterprise application software will reach $120bn this year, according to the latest Gartner research
June 20, 2012 20 Jun'12
Aston Martin implements Microsoft for accounts

Car manufacturer Aston Martin implemented an ERP system from Microsoft when it required a new accounting system
June 19, 2012 19 Jun'12
Forrester: Prepare for digital disruption in your business

The digital revolution will impact every business sector. CIOs must adapt to support digital products
June 19, 2012 19 Jun'12
Oracle reports strong profit growth

Oracle reported an 8% increase in profits on a 1% increase in sales for the fourth quarter of its 2012 financial year
June 18, 2012 18 Jun'12
Microsoft customers react to July licence fee hike

Microsoft’s decision to increase the costs of volume licensing agreements demonstrates the power software suppliers wield over their customers
June 18, 2012 18 Jun'12
US Sequoia machine takes title of fastest supercomputer

The US has overtaken Japan in the race for the world’s fastest supercomputer, with the Sequoia computer achieving 16.32 petaflop/s
June 18, 2012 18 Jun'12
Japan's K computer to drive breakthroughs in engineering, medicine and science

Japan’s K computer, ranked last year as the world’s most powerful supercomputer, is expected to drive breakthroughs in engineering, medicine and science when it enters live operation in October
June 18, 2012 18 Jun'12
Asian scientists call for government action on supercomputers

Scientists in India, China, Japan, Korea and India have called on their governments to collaborate on supercomputer technology
June 14, 2012 14 Jun'12
Microsoft pushes Azure as cloud infrastructure on demand

Microsoft is now offering Azure as on-demand cloud infrastructure, supporting both Windows and Linux workloads
June 14, 2012 14 Jun'12
Beware what you ask of big data – you might just get the answer

One of the perils inherent in big data projects is not knowing what to do with the results
June 13, 2012 13 Jun'12
The cloud will move supercomputers into the mainstream

Cloud computing will move supercomputers out of the research labs into mainstream business, says Amazon
June 13, 2012 13 Jun'12
BAE assesses off-the-shelf application lifecycle management

BAE Maritime Systems is assessing new tools from Serena Software to support mission-critical software development
June 13, 2012 13 Jun'12
South Lanarkshire moves to IBM XIV disk storage platform

South Lanarkshire council has invested in an IBM XIV disk storage platform as part of its move to virtualisation.
June 13, 2012 13 Jun'12
O’Neill consolidates IT applications to grow profits

Retail chain O’Neill Europe has undergone a major IT consolidation to cut costs and use information more efficiently in a difficult trading market
June 12, 2012 12 Jun'12
IT must use cloud to improve business processes

The cloud will grow exponentially in business and CIOs must use it to enable business processes and make companies more agile
June 11, 2012 11 Jun'12
Gartner: Client server returns for mobile apps

Gartner expects CIOs to shift software development towards mobile development by 2015, with an emphasis on HTML 5.0
June 08, 2012 08 Jun'12
MobileIron ramps up mobile device management

MobileIron is providing a suite of tools to secure and provision Android and iOS devices in the enterprise
June 06, 2012 06 Jun'12
UK falling behind in cloud adoption, study shows

In spite of all the hype in the industry around cloud computing, UK IT decision-makers are not prepared to put applications in the cloud
June 06, 2012 06 Jun'12
HP eyes EMC’s storage market

HP has released a StoreOnce data deduplication back-up system, which it claims can ingest data at 100TB per hour – three times faster than EMC’s recently launched Data Domain 990
May 31, 2012 31 May'12
Met Office says open source is ‘backbone of our operations’

Open source has become critical to the operations of the Met Office with Linux used in the organisation for a decade.
May 31, 2012 31 May'12
William Grant & Sons opens datacentre for ERP consolidation

Distiller William Grant & Sons opens a UK datacentre to consolidate its global ERP operation
May 30, 2012 30 May'12
Inadequate financial reporting holds firms back

Businesses admit difficulties in controlling data quality when reporting financial results as finance executives complain of stress as a result
May 28, 2012 28 May'12
Premier Foods chooses Google Apps for remote collaboration

Premier Foods is using Google Apps to improve collaboration and help it reduce costs and restore profitable growth
May 28, 2012 28 May'12
Police shared service supports forces miles apart

Cheshire and Northamptonshire Police are linking back-office systems after identifying each other as at similar points in their IT development
May 24, 2012 24 May'12
One question to clinch a software deal with Angel Trains

Angel Trains asked shortlisted software suppliers one question, which resulted in a deal to take a suite of software from Oracle
May 24, 2012 24 May'12
Hewlett-Packard to cut 27,000 jobs

HP is to cut 27,000 jobs, or 8% of its workforce, as part of a plan to achieve annual savings of up to $3.5bn by the end of fiscal year 2014
May 23, 2012 23 May'12
Amey uses SAP HR system to manage 11,000 people

Developed by SAP specialist Epi-use, SAP HR is being used to power a human resources shared service at construction firm Amey
May 23, 2012 23 May'12
What are the challenges for the NHS IT strategy?

As the NHS publishes its Information Strategy Computer Weekly examines the challenges and the relevance of a central IT agenda now the structure is devolved to local commissioning groups
May 23, 2012 23 May'12
SAP to expand cloud offerings with acquisition of Ariba

SAP strikes $4.3bn deal to acquire cloud-based business commerce network, Ariba
May 22, 2012 22 May'12
Salesforce.com has no ERP offering in the pipeline

Cloud provider Salesforce.com claims to have no current plans to move into the enterprise resource planning space currently occupied by incumbents SAP and Oracle
May 22, 2012 22 May'12
EMC claims cloud not ready for enterprise back-up

As EMC launches a number of back-up products, the division’s president says cloud back-up faces a lot of challenges.
May 21, 2012 21 May'12
Global software piracy increasing rapidly, study shows

Global software piracy is increasing rapidly in the absence of any effective deterrence, a survey has revealed.
May 21, 2012 21 May'12
CloudStore 2 launched ahead of supplier accreditation

The second iteration of the government’s CloudStore has gone live ahead of suppliers from the first framework having been accredited to sell products on the first G-Cloud framework.
May 21, 2012 21 May'12
Interview: Giles Wilmore on the NHS Information Strategy

Giles Wilmore,owner of the Department of Health’s information strategy, discusses plans for a health portal and IT standards post-NPfIT.
May 17, 2012 17 May'12
NYSE Euronext brings capital markets cloud to Basildon

NYSE Technologies is making its Capital Markets Community Platform available in Europe
May 15, 2012 15 May'12
SAP pushes mobile enterprise apps at Sapphire

New apps from SAP include travel expenses, CRM, safety investigation and healthcare
May 14, 2012 14 May'12
Enterprises putting HR in the cloud

Global businesses are moving the management of workforce relations into the cloud to eliminate siloed working through a single HR system across regions.
May 11, 2012 11 May'12
Adobe Muse offers websites without code

The software helps users build websites without them having to know HTML
May 03, 2012 03 May'12
Microsoft hikes volume licensing prices by up to 33%

UK organisations buying Microsoft volume licensing will see up to 33.5% price hikes from July as the firm attempts to harmonise European prices.
May 03, 2012 03 May'12
What is the top priority for IT execs in 2012, and why?

Why, given a choice of 14 IT concerns, including cloud computing, did application performance management (APM) come out on top?
May 03, 2012 03 May'12
Infostrada teams up with Roambi, mobile sports analytics at Olympics

Dutch media sports information provider Infostrada has teamed up with mobile BI company Roambi to create an iPhone and iPad app for the Olympics. It will predict medal counts.
May 01, 2012 01 May'12
Interview: Oracle president Mark Hurd

Eighteen months after leaving HP in controversial circumstances, Mark Hurd discusses what cloud, mobile and big data mean to Oracle
May 01, 2012 01 May'12
Network company Enterasys offers BYOD network management

Network company Enterasys is to provide network management for bring your own device (BYOD) deployments
May 01, 2012 01 May'12
Gartner: Businesses forge on with middleware despite downturn

CIOs continue with application infrastructure and middleware technologies to prepare for hybrid clouds despite economic conditions
April 27, 2012 27 Apr'12
Oracle Secure Cloud to launch in the summer, says Mark Hurd

Oracle will release its Oracle Secure Cloud offering in an official launch this summer, according to company president Mark Hurd.
April 27, 2012 27 Apr'12
Amazon results demonstrate commitment to cloud

Amazon's AWS cloud business made $500m in sales in the first quarter of 2012, comprising 3.79% of Amazon's Q1 business
April 26, 2012 26 Apr'12
Train firm replaces bespoke software off-the-shelf

Angel Trains is preparing itself for massive changes to the rail industry by replacing bespoke applications with Oracle software.
April 25, 2012 25 Apr'12
SAP reports double-digit growth

SAP has continued where it left off last year with an 11% increase in sales in the first three months of 2012.
April 24, 2012 24 Apr'12
IT suppliers struggle to meet customers' cloud expectations

IT suppliers are struggling to transform their business models to meet customers' expectations of cloud
April 20, 2012 20 Apr'12
CIO interview: Matt Peers, Deloitte

“I love the consumerisation of IT,” says Matt Peers, CIO of Deloitte, where mobility is the company’s main IT priority.
April 19, 2012 19 Apr'12
Banks and SAP collaborate on cloud platform

Citibank and the Royal Bank of Scotland are working with SAP to develop a cloud platform businesses can link their systems to directly
April 19, 2012 19 Apr'12
Supercomputers will reach 'exascale' speeds within decade

Supercomputers will be powerful enough to simulate the human brain within seven years, says founder of Top500 list.
April 19, 2012 19 Apr'12
Amazon launches software marketplace on AWS

Amazon claims its new online store will make it easy for customers to find, compare, and start using cloud software.
April 19, 2012 19 Apr'12
Learning more than one programming language can boost salary by £10,000

Knowing multiple programming languages, such as Java, C and C#, can get you noticed faster in the IT jobs market.
April 18, 2012 18 Apr'12
Government unaware how much it pays for e-mail services

Government departments do not know how much they are spending on e-mail services, according to research by Computer Weekly.
April 18, 2012 18 Apr'12
Tesco ramps up digital investment

Tesco is ramping up its online division in the UK, as part of its plan to invest £1bn following disappointing sales in Britain.
April 17, 2012 17 Apr'12
Supercomputers: Q&A guide

Hans Werner Meuer, co-founder of the Top 500 supercomputer list, discusses the latest trends in high performance computing.
April 16, 2012 16 Apr'12
Gartner: CEOs want to use IT to boost business growth

Gartner's CEO study shows businesses leaders favour CRM as the tool to grow the business, but fail to think radically
April 16, 2012 16 Apr'12
Betfair opens up to software developers

Online gambling firm Betfair is inviting software developers to build apps that work with its betting exchange through a cloud-based development environment known as App Cloud.
April 13, 2012 13 Apr'12
Financial companies leading race to digitisation

Financial companies are embracing digitisation faster than other sectors of the economy, says Booz&Co.
April 13, 2012 13 Apr'12
Two more councils join CapacityGRID

Dacorum and North Warwickshire Borough Councils have joined a shared service which provides transactional services to councils.
April 13, 2012 13 Apr'12
Gordon Frazer leaves Microsoft UK for China

Microsoft managing director Gordon Frazer is moving to China as the new chief operating officer for Microsoft GCR.
April 12, 2012 12 Apr'12
IBM rejoins the pre-integrated IT systems party

IBM is the latest mega-supplier to jump on the pre-integrated hardware and software IT system bandwagon.
April 11, 2012 11 Apr'12
SAP takes on Oracle in database war

SAP is making Sybase its core relational database technology in a move towards challenging Oracle's dominant market position
April 11, 2012 11 Apr'12
Mining company AngloGold Ashanti hosts global ERP in UK

Gold mining company AngloGold Ashanti is moving to a single global SAP ERP system, based in the UK and managed by Fujitsu
April 05, 2012 05 Apr'12
Gartner: $44bn less spending on IT in 2012

Gartner has revised down its IT spending forecast by $44.4bn due to global currency issues, but still expects spending to increase
April 04, 2012 04 Apr'12
Microsoft improves virtual desktops but drops inventory software

Microsoft is expanding its desktop virtualisation product family with software that retains user preferences as they switch between devices
April 04, 2012 04 Apr'12
Atos completes first live software rehearsal for London 2012 Olympics

Atos has completed the first live rehearsal of IT, communications, media, sports and security systems for the London 2012 Olympics
April 03, 2012 03 Apr'12
HMRC awards IE6 upgrade contract to SME and saves £50m

HMRC has cut the cost of an IT project by nearly £50m after awarding the contract to a start-up, rather than a traditional systems integrator
April 02, 2012 02 Apr'12
Knight Frank selects Virgin Media Business network for switch to fat clients

Property consultant deploys faster WAN to avoid Citrix server farm upgrade and improve unified communications
April 02, 2012 02 Apr'12
Gartner: Business intelligence still highest priority for CIOs

Analytics and business intelligence is the number one technology priority for CIOs in 2012, according to analyst firm Gartner
March 30, 2012 30 Mar'12
Biggest upgrade to PAYE system to go live in April

The biggest upgrade to the UK's PAYE system since the 1950s goes live within two weeks.
March 29, 2012 29 Mar'12
Danone uses SAP to reduce carbon footprint

Heath food maker Danone has used SAP to reduce its carbon footprint by 22%.
March 28, 2012 28 Mar'12
Cabinet Office negotiates £75m saving on Oracle deal

The Cabinet Office has signed a deal with Oracle to save £75m by 2015 across central government, the emergency services and the NHS
March 27, 2012 27 Mar'12
Retail and insurance lead two-speed IT spending

More IT-based businesses are starting with greater investment in IT after the slowdown, but with lopsided demand as businesses increase spending at different rates
March 27, 2012 27 Mar'12
Global SaaS spend to reach $14.5bn in 2012

Global software-as-a-service sales are forecast to reach $14.5bn (£9bn) in 2012, rising to $22.1bn by 2015
March 26, 2012 26 Mar'12
Southampton University upgrades supercomputer for high performance computing research

Southampton University is leading a consortium in creating a Centre of Innovation for the Application of High Performance Computing