ITV is not usually on our reporting list but some of you might have attended, like me, the recent Prince's Trust Technology/Internet & Media Leadership Group Breakfast Meeting at EY - addressed by ITV's CEO Adam Crozier.I was really impressed!

In the last few minutes, it has been announced that, after 7 years at the helm, Crozier was to stand down at the end of the month. 

Let me quote from The Times this morning. "Over the past seven years Mr Crozier has transformed the former basket case from a domestic broadcaster reliant on UK advertisers to a producer of global hits including Victoria and Poldark. The numbers speak for themselves: during his reign earnings per share have grown by 844 per cent."

Crozier was previously CEO of Royal Mail and head of the Football Association. I'm sure he will be in great demand either as a CEO or non executive director!

Although Crozier's departure had been long rumoured, there doesn't appear to be a successor in the wings. Also, there has been much rumour about ITV being acquired. Personaly I would have thought it would be a great purchase for Apple or Amazon - both of which are looking for great content.

From Tech Crunch we learn that BNP Paribas has joined the lengthening list of banks running fintech accelerators. In this case BNP Paribas is using the innovation ecosystem approach driven by Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play who link entrepreneurs with angels and VC firms, making seed investments in many of the companies that participate in their accelerator programmes.

BNP Paribas will work with ten start-ups to identify potential solutions to current problems or to exploit opportunities. Presenting real-life situations and direct communication with the business units are key components of a successful fintech accelerator programme. The ten start-ups selected (3 from France, 2 from the USA and one each from the UK, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and Spain) offer technologies addressing a wide range of areas.

But this begs the following questions: How can any bank use fintech accelerators to make a real difference to its business and shareholder value? Is all this just “innovation theatre” to impress shareholders and account holders? How can any bank hope to bring real solutions to major problems or scale-up (probably exciting and innovative) ideas, given its almost certainly over-stretched IT department, long list of chronic problems and with no real understanding how it can work with small companies which are reliant on one or two individuals.

Yes, banks need to access innovation, but in our view to be really successful they need to enlist the help of larger system integrators and SITS suppliers. These can act as a carrier wave and a guarantor for smaller companies, helping them to scale-up their solutions and overcome the cultural issues of getting things done in a big bank.

You can read TechMarketView’s latest Fintech report and our views on the role of larger SITS companies in Fintech in our 2017 Predictions Compendium.

Hull City Council has deepened its relationship with the Civica Group, signing a five-year agreement with Civica Digital for the provision of a ‘digital enablement suite’ to increase the efficiency of back office automation. Civica is working in partnership with Master Data Management (MDM) experts VisionWare to provide a single view of Hull’s citizen data under a contract that we estimate to be worth c£2.5m to Civica.

The deal reinforces the strategic nature of Civica’s longstanding relationship with Hull and highlights the value that Civica Digital brings to the group (see Civica launches into Digital if you’re a TechMarketView subscription client). Civica already provides the council with a range of applications and both outsourced revenues and benefits services and outsourced contact centre services. This agreement takes the partnership to the next level as the Council strives to deliver significant cost and time savings, increase customer satisfaction and gain deeper insight into citizen service consumption to support its wider strategic digital transformation project.

Civica’s Digital360 suite of software and services is being combined with VisionWare’s MulitVue MDM solution to create a more personalised service for citizens, providing better data management and a universal citizen portal across all council departments. It will enable citizens to raise issues and access their query status and transactions with the Council in a single place online, and receive pro-active updates via text message. Hull aims to extend use of the software to support mobile and more flexible ways of working across all council departments in the future.

Our view is that Civica Digital is well-placed to pick up other similar deals with Civica’s many local authority clients as – in the words of Councillor Clark, the Portfolio Holder for Customer Services at Hull City Council – they are all “under financial strain and need to work smarter and use [their] resources more efficiently”. 

Facebook had a stonking Q1 - beating expectations on every metric.  Revenues were up 49% yoy at $8.03b with mobile now making up 85% of advertising revenues.  EPS was up a major 73% yoy with profits up 76% yoy at $3.06b. Facebook now boasts 5m active advertisers - double that at the end of 2015.

Facebook users grew tantalising close to the 2b level - 1.94b to be precise and up 17% yoy. WhatsApp and Messenger both have 1.2b monthly active users with Instagram adding a further 700m. Facebook could have faced strong competition from Snapchat. But it turned the tables on Snap with a barrage of its own Snap-look-a-like features. Eg Facebook Stories, Messenger Day and WhatsApp Status. It is even taking on LinkedIn with its new jobs feature. Future emphasis is on video - as we all know from our Facebook feeds.

But it has also been a rough period for Facebook with all the bad press over Fake News. We should remember that the huge ad revenues that Facebook attracts are not ‘new’ revenues. They are nicked from conventional channels like the national and local press, radio and TV.  All these channels are highly regulated - and in the main highly responsible and aware of their position in society. None would dream of live streaming a murder, the abuse of children, advocating terrorism etc. So we shouldn’t tolerate this on Facebook either. Facebook is belatedly hiring an additional 3000 ‘moderators’ (making the team 7,500 strong) to help reduce these incidents. Indeed it has warned of the expense this will create. ‘About time too’ I say. It really is time for Facebook to face up to its  responsibilities. 

TechMarketView is delighted once again to be both a Sponsor of/and Judge in The Enterprise Awards 2017 (in association with WCIT). This year the event, known as the ‘Oscars for UK Tech Entrepreneurs’, is even bigger and grander than prior years and takes place at the Dorchester on 14 June 2017. (Over 300 leaders in UK tech have already booked a place in the audience at the Awards ceremony - for full details and to book a table yourself Click Here).

If you haven't yet put yourself or your CEO/founder forward for an Enterprise Award then there's no time to waste as the deadline is tomorrow. Unlike TechMarketView’s Little British Battlers or Great British Scaleups, the Enterprise Awards are for individuals not companies. So, if you are already an LBB or budding GBS, why not enter yourself, or your CEO/founder, for an Enterprise Award? Indeed, many already have - and won - in the past.

TechmarketView will be at the Awards on 14 June and we’d love to see you there too.The Award categories are as follows:

·      Young Entrepreneur 

·      Evergreen Entrepreneur - for founders who started their business aged 50 or over

·      Emerging Entrepreneur – up to £1 million annual revenue

·      Developing Entrepreneur – annual revenue between £1 and £5 million

·      Scaling Up Award – fastest growing companies

·      Enterprise Entrepreneur – annual revenue over £10 million

·      Social Enterprise Entrepreneur - for entrepreneurs with a business model that gives something back

·      Public Sector Award - excellence and achievement in the public sector

·      Female Entrepreneur - for outstanding female entrepreneurs

·      Mentor of the Year

·      and the Judges Special Award.

Entries must be received by this Friday, 5 May. Entry forms can be downloaded from Enterprise Awards 2017 Entry Form or contact Sarah Robinson at tx2 Events - sarah.robinson@tx2events.com or 020 31372541. Good luck!

Reading-based cyber security minnow Osirium Technologies plc has had a pretty disappointing time on AIM since its IPO last April (see here). The company’s shares are now down a quarter on their offering price of 156p, and are down over 10% this morning.

Being a tiny fish among shark infested waters is not an easy place to be. Revenue for the 14 months to 31 December missed expectations, at £478k, although this was up 65% yoy. Operating losses meanwhile more than doubled to £1.8m. This was down to increased investment in sales and marketing and additional headcount in R&D and customer support. The good news at least is the cash balance, which stands at a healthy £3.6m thanks to the IPO.

Osirium’s technology is differentiated in the cyber space, preventing targeted attacks from within the organisation, via Privileged Accounts, which contain the effects of a breach if one does happen. Progress is being made in developing its distribution network, via a new relationship with security products distributor Dystology, and three new customers won in the first few months of 2017, in insurance, critical national infrastructure and a retail mobile technology provider. There’s plenty of growth for Osirium, so long as it is able to continue swimming in this highly competitive space.

FireEye’s transition to a software as a service (SaaS) model continues apace, with the cybersecurity company reporting a better than expected 3% rise in quarterly revenue driven by its subscription and services business.

Q117 turnover hit US$174m, US$33m of which came from support and maintenance fees (up 17% yoy). Product subscriptions to its “as a service” platforms also grew 17% to US$87m. By contrast, revenue from FireEye products (including network security and end point protection appliances) fell 30% yoy to US$24m, whilst turnover from professional services (including Mandiant Consulting) fell 6% yoy to US$30m.

The better than expected figures look good for FireEye, but still represent a second successive quarter of negative growth (Q316 revenue peaked at US$186m and Q416 US$185m). The company has previously blamed poor performance on a reduction in the scale and severity of cyber attacks on US companies following the accord to reduce mutual cyberespionage reached between the Obama administration and the Chinese government at the end of 2015.

US sales still make up the majority of FireEye’s activity (66% in Q117), but the mix is slowing turning in favour of international revenue. Whereas sales to US customers fell 3% yoy (US$115m), equivalent turnover from the EMEA region rose 4% to US$25m, and APAC 18% to US$26m.

FireEye’s challenge now is to adjust to a new world of smaller, criminal-orientated cyber threats including phishing and ransomware, keep moving customers onto its SaaS services and edge ever closer to profitability.

Net pre-tax Q117 losses improved to US$82m, down from US$166m a year earlier with net loss per share improving to 48 cents from 98 cents in Q116. The company now expects to see positive non-GAAP income for the first time in Q417, and to reduce non-GAAP net loss per share to the range of 26-36 cents.

An impressive first half performance from accounting software leader Sage, has lead to management being ‘very confident’ of topping their full year growth expectations of 6%.

We recently attended the Sage Summit, where we saw first-hand the progress being made, particularly on its transformational ‘cloud-first’ initiative (see here).

For the period ended 31 March, Sage's organic revenues (excluding acquisitions and the North American business held for sale) were up 6.4% to £838m. Organic operating profits were up 5% to £211m, keeping the margin more or less flat at 25%. CE Steven Kelly said seven of Sage’s nine largest geographies, together generating 95% of revenues, are now delivering growth in excess of revenue guidance – hence the confidence in beating the FY revenue target.

Looking under the covers shows a business carefully managing its transition to the cloud - subscriptions were up 31%, and recurring revenues up 10%. Sage’s traditional SSRS business meanwhile is declining 8%.

There are also encouraging signs from the cloud-first initiative. Sage’s flagship SME offering Sage One delivered recurring revenues up 88% to £22m, and it now has an average annual contract value of £70. Revenues from the large enterprise Sage X3 meanwhile, grew 17%, with 200 new customers in H1.

Sage is making strides on the M&A front too. Last week it purchased San Francisco-based analytics and benchmarking player Compass, which supports ecommerce businesses with actionable insights to help them grow and improve their performance. The big deal in the UK was the takeover of SaaS HR player and Little British Battler Fairsail in March (see here).

Fairsail is the largest takeover to date of our LBBs, at 11x revenue. There have now been a total of 16 LBBs acquired since we met, including two in the past month (OSMO and Genfour), making the LBBs and wider UK Tech SME space, a hotbed of investment activity right now (see LBB100 report).

There’s just three days to go to get your application in for the inaugural TechMarketView Great British Scaleup Event to be held in London on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th June.

If you run a fast growing, privately held, UK-owned tech SME and feel that you are ready, willing and able to make a step-change in growth, the TechMarketView Great British Scaleup programme aims to help you connect with external finance to accelerate your scale-up journey.

Four of the most promising candidates will be invited to participate in an intensive half-day, closed-door session to explore their growth options in confidence with TechMarketView and our founding Advisory Sponsor, ScaleUp Group, whose team of successful tech entrepreneurs and experienced executives have been responsible for accelerating growth at companies like yours.

All applicants, whether or not selected for this event, will also be eligible for an initial infrastructure assessment at no charge by managed cloud and infrastructure services firm Cogeco Peer 1, the Enterprise Cloud & Infrastructure Services Technology Partner for the Great British Scaleup programme.

Companies participating in the Great British Scaleup programme will also enjoy invaluable exposure in TechMarketView UKHotViews, widely acknowledged as the most influential daily commentary on the UK tech scene, as well as coverage in selected TechMarketView research.

Applications must be submitted BY FRIDAY 5TH MAY via the web-based Pre-Qualification Form. Successful applicants will be notified by 26 May.

There is no charge to apply or participate in this event, so don’t miss this chance to be one of the first TechMarketView Great British Scaleups!

Further information can be found in the Great British Scaleup page on our website or by contacting us at gbs@techmarketview.com.

I believe I may have just coined a new buzzword for ‘on demand' beauty services, but as they seem to abound, it is appropriate. Hence ‘beautech’.

The problem is, their track record has not been great. One of the first UK beautech startups (and the first to be crowdfunded on Crowdcube), Bubble & Balm, ceased trading back in 2013 after a two-year stint. And more recently, Rock Pamper Scissors had its own haircut earlier this year having raised £1.2m in May 2016 (see Rock Pamper Scissors styles £1.2m funding treatment).

But I have a feeling that there may be a greater chance of success for London-based Blow, as much because of who is dishing out the dosh, as in Unilever Ventures, the VC arm of the international consumer goods giant, which has just led a further £3.5m funding round in Blow. Unilever Ventures first invested in Blow in April 2016, contributing £0.5m towards a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs which raised £1.35m in total on a ‘pre-money’ valuation of £6m. According to CrunchBase, Blow raised a further £3.15m on Seedrs last December.

As part of the current funding round, venture capitalist (and BBC NED) Dharmash Mistry, Blow's co-founding CEO, steps down – or rather up – to become chairman, to make room for Brian Hickey, previously Regional Director at Just Eat, a man who therefore clearly knows his way around the ‘on demand’ services industry. Blow co-founder Fiona McIntosh, formally ex-Editor-in-Chief of Grazia and ELLE, remains Creative Director.

Blow’s services are targeted at women, of course, but surely there should be a burgeoning opportunity for home-call beauticians for 'men of style' (if not substance). Who knows, perhaps Blow will be the beautech startup that ‘makes up’ for the others that didn’t make it.

I just can’t help myself. I know companies spend big dosh to roll out new branding, and I know how desperate they are to convey the new sense of purpose that the branding aims to represent. But after more than 40 years immersed in the tech sector my ‘cynical’ genes simply get the better of me.

Bangalore-based offshore services supplier, Wipro, has much to be proud of, having grown to become a top tier Indian pure-play. But like most IPPs, times are getting very much tougher (see Wipro predicts new year slowdown) and all are having to pedal harder even to stand still.

But it’s moot whether Wipro’s move from symbolising itself as a rainbow flower (logo on right) to rainbow blobs (logo on left) will be as transformative as perhaps management might hope.

Wipro describes the new logo as ‘a bold and dynamic signature that proudly headlines the vision we pursue for our company and all those we serve … The multi-colored dots convey a dynamic energy and optimism. With the simple strength of the Wipro wordmark, and the evocative interplay of form and color, the elements of our logo unite to suggest the new world of connections that Wipro champions. With our identity …’ I just can’t go on – you surely get the gist.

Wipro’s new hashtag is #BeTheNew. But first they need to #ShakeOffTheOld.

There’s just TWO DAYS LEFT to get your application in for the inaugural TechMarketView Great British Scaleup Event to be held in London on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th June.

If you run a fast growing, privately held, UK-owned tech SME and feel that you are ready, willing and able to make a step-change in growth, the TechMarketView Great British Scaleup programme aims to help you connect with external finance to accelerate your scale-up journey.

Four of the most promising candidates will be invited to participate in an intensive half-day, closed-door session to discuss their business plans and prospects in confidence with TechMarketView and our founding Advisory Sponsor, ScaleUp Group, whose team of successful tech entrepreneurs and experienced executives have been responsible for accelerating growth at companies like yours.

All applicants, whether or not selected for this event, will also be eligible for an initial infrastructure assessment at no charge by managed cloud and infrastructure services firm Cogeco Peer 1, the Enterprise Cloud & Infrastructure Services Technology Partner for the Great British Scaleup programme.

Companies participating in the Great British Scaleup programme will also enjoy invaluable exposure in TechMarketView UKHotViews, widely acknowledged as the most influential daily commentary on the UK tech scene, as well as coverage in selected TechMarketView research.

Applications must be submitted BY FRIDAY 5TH MAY via the web-based Pre-Qualification Form. Successful applicants will be notified by 26 May.

There is no charge to apply or participate in this event, so don’t miss this chance to be one of the first TechMarketView Great British Scaleups!

Further information can be found in the Great British Scaleup page on our website or by contacting us at gbs@techmarketview.com.

Kimble Applications, a global leader in professional services automation (PSA), is pleased to announce the launch of its latest release, version 1.25 of Kimble. This is the first software solution for consulting organisations to feature embedded augmented intelligence, which guides best practice and streamlines project delivery. The official release took place during the Technology Services World Conference in San Diego this week.

This release of Kimble identifies patterns in data and feeds these into a range of “intelligent insights”, which illuminate the path ahead, suggesting to users what needs to be done next. For example, Kimble will automatically calculate the average margin on past projects for a specific client and highlight that when a new proposal is being created.

“We are delighted to bring the Kimble Intelligent PSA to market and help our customers drive transformational change in their organisations. Our dedicated team of software developers have been working hard to help our customers utilize the power of augmented intelligence,” said Sean Hoban, CEO of Kimble Applications.

“Kimble’s intelligent insights help us to expand and to drive increased business performance without the need to take on many more administrative or supervisory staff,” Howard Roberts, professional services director at Canon said.

“We are not talking about bringing in robots to do a professional services project. Instead, we are looking to use machine learning to better guide the employees in the right direction,” said John Ragsdale, vice president of research technology and social at TSIA.

To request a Kimble demo, visit https://www.kimbleapps.com/demo.

You might not warm to the term “Internet of Things” (IoT), but it has come to define a system of ubiquitous sensors that can connect the physical world to the Internet. The value is of course in the flow of data from and between sensors/devices and the real-time data analysis that can enable more automated, predictive and intelligent decisions and activities. Possible applications are numerous and diverse, and most are yet to be discovered. However, this nascent market has massive potential to change our lives by making the world smarter.

IoT is an excellent example of our research theme for this year: Unlocking the Intelligence. While the estimates for the potential number of sensors dotted around our environment will go into the billions (or even trillions), its most profound impact will come from taking data analytics and digital integration decision making to another level. However, we are only just at the very start of understanding the ‘art of the possible’ and current IoT revenue for traditional IT services suppliers is very small indeed. Furthermore, their challenges involve not only navigating market immaturity, but also in identifying where – and when – to invest.

In this research note we investigate what IT services providers could be doing to position themselves for future opportunities as they flow through. We also examine some of the use cases that have emerged recently and take a look at how some suppliers are positioning themselves for success.

Read the report here: Internet of Things: Time for IT services providers to accelerate their strategies?

This research is available for subscribers to InfrastructureViews. If you do not currently subscribe and would like to, please contact Deb Seth.

CenturyLink remains a company in transition after buying Level 3 Communications and selling off its data centre assets, an organisational rethink reflected in its first quarter results.

The telco and IT service provider’s Q117 revenue was down 4% to US$4.2bn while net income declined 31% to US$163m as acquisition costs and an impairment charge eroded the bottom line.

Much of CenturyLink’s turnover (US$1.8bn) still comes from legacy services (enterprise and consumer voice and low-bandwidth data), all of which showed inexorable yoy declines.

But other than a 4% increase in turnover from enterprise high-bandwidth data services, there wasn’t much cause for celebration elsewhere in Q117. Other enterprise strategic service and data integration revenue was either static or down (6% in the case of IT and managed services).

Handling the necessary migration away from declining voice revenue will be a continuing challenge for CenturyLink over the course of the financial year, and it is under pressure to grow turnover from other business segments to compensate.

The reorganisation of those units into consumer, enterprise and IT and managed services segments should help the company narrow its focus on connectivity and cloud provision, but with the loss of revenue from the sale of its data centre and colocation business (completed on 1^st May) any return to growth looks unlikely in the short term.

For CGI in Q2 (and H1) all the key performance indicators look healthy. In Q2, at constant currency (ccy), revenue was up 5.6% to CAN$2.7b (though currency movements resulted in a minor dip in headline revenues). Adjusted EBIT for the quarter was also up, by 1.1% to CAN$395.1m, pushing the margin up by 30bp to 14.5%. And for the six-month period (H2), it was a similar story: revenues up 2.7% ccy, but down after the impact of currency movements, albeit by only 0.6% to CAN$5.4b. The growth – which has been positive for four consecutive quarters - continues to be both organic and acquisitive. Indeed, in April, the company announced the acquisition of two US-based high-end consulting firms, in line with the strategy to enhance CGI’s capabilities with “high-end digital and industry domain expertise”.

The story in the UK wasn’t quite as rosy – quite a contrast to Q1 when we reported that the UK business had triumphed (see CGI UK: Q1 benefits from favourable renegotiation).

At the revenue level, currency movements hit the UK business. Headline revenues were down 12.7% to CAN$314.7m. Though on ccy basis, revenues increased by 4.6%. More work in the telco & utilities vertical is highlighted as well as the positive impact of change requests on some contracts. The EBIT margin also suffered during the quarter, though it does appear to be just a blip due to a problem contract. Adjusted EBIT dropped by CAN$19.9m to $23.2m, pushing the margin down from 12.0% (in Q216) to 7.4%. This was “primarily the result of an adjustment due to the re-evaluation of cost to complete a project”. It must be said that, under CGI, such issues have been quite unusual.

Fortunately, in H2, the EBIT margin benefited from a “favourable renegotiation on a loss-making contract” in Q1, so the margin for the six-month period didn’t suffer as much (down from 12.1% to 11.1%).  The half also benefited from the strong growth in revenues in Q1 (again down to the favourable renegotiation). But, even so, H1 revenues still dipped slightly (at ccy), down 0.9%. The UK bookings picture (though not always a good indicator of future revenue growth, due to the nature of outsourcing contracts) also gives a little cause for concern – the book-to-bill ratio for the trailing 12-month period stands at just 84.6% (compare to 107.9% for the Group as a whole). We have commented before that CGI has made some smart bets, investing in its digital IP and in its Scottish presence (see CGI FY16: UK investment in ‘digital’ and ‘Scotland’ pays off). We still wait to see if that has paid off at Glasgow Council (see Glasgow City Council eyes up CGI & Agilisys). Meanwhile, CGI’s Digital Collaboration Platform (DCP) is aimed at the UK public sector, where General Election Purdah and Brexit have the potential to slow down progress.

Speculation is mounting that UK-headquartered software and services firm Civica is to be put up for sale by its Canadian owners, OMERS Private Equity.

OMERS acquired Civica from 3i in 2013 for £390m (see Civica acquired by OMERS Private Equity) and according to reports from Sky News and Reuters it has now decided to sell the company, hiring Goldman Sachs to oversee the process. Reuters, citing unnamed banking sources, claims that banks are readying £450m of debt financing to back the sale. OMERS and Civica declined to comment.

Civica has grown significantly over recent years. In its most recent fiscal year (to end September 2016) it turned over nearly £270m, 14% up on the prior year, and reported an EBITDA of £55m, up nearly 18% on FY15 (see 15 years of growth for Civica). In the year before OMERS took ownership (FY12), Civica turned over £205m with an EBITDA of £38m.

The business has also evolved considerably since OMERS took over; making a series of strategic acquisitions, taking on more outsourcing and bigger deals, launching its Civica Digital proposition and pushing into central government (see TechMarketView’s recent UK Public Sector SITS Supplier Landscape report). Against this backdrop, and given the high levels of PE interest and M&A activity in the sectors where Civica is focused (notably the UK public sector and healthcare markets), it would not be in the least surprising for OMERS to explore its exit options nearly five years into an investment.

Should a sale process be confirmed, we’d expect a significant level of interest in Civica, which ranks 17th in our UK Public Sector SITS rankings. Interested parties are likely to range from deep-pocketed private equity houses (the likes of Vista, which took Advanced private in 2014 for example) through to IT and business process outsourcers looking to add IP to their offering and gain access to Civica’s loyal public sector customer base. Whatever happens, the team at Civica will be working hard to ensure that, as far as possible, any sale process doesn’t prove a distraction and it continues to be ‘business as usual’ for those all-important customers.

For a more detailed analysis of Civica, PublicSectorViews subscribers can read our profile of the business in the UK Public Sector SITS Supplier Landscape report and the 2016 research, Civica: Planning for growth.

Last night I attended a reception to celebrate ‘DXC Technology - The First Month’ together with DXC’s major clients and partners…and TechMarketView. I was really chuffed to be the only analyst firm invited and even more chuffed when Nick Wilson called us out in his opening remarks as being his most respected analyst firm (or words to that effect!)

We’ve reported on the CSC/HPE Enterprise Services link up many times before (see - Official launch day for DXC Technology) and there wasn’t too much new announced yesterday. But, as Nick said, DXC is a company with worldwide revenues of $25B ($4.1b in UK) and 170,000 employees (14,000 in the UK). 91 datacentres servicing 6000+ clients in 70+ countries. A ‘new’ company but with 60+ years of experience and innovation behind it. A ‘new’ company catapulted into the #1 spot in many geographies.

Looks like the first month has gone according to plan. As Wilson said everyone got paid and the email worked! Some of you may know how Wilson systematically tried to get rid of EDS memorabilia after the HP acquisition. Looks like he’s worked just as diligently to get the old CSC/HPE stuff replaced with DXC mugs, T-shirts, notepads etc. Getting the new teams to work together is key to success.

Watch out for more in-depth reports on DXC Technology for paid for subscribers from TechMarketView very soon.

Declaration - I've been a CSC (and now DXC) shareholder for a long time - ever since Mike Lawrie took the helm. DXC shares up over 30% YTD.

Little British Battler Ultrahaptics really captures the imagination. Its patented haptics technology uses ultrasound to project sensations directly onto a person’s hand to interact with virtual objects in mid-air – think Tom Cruise in Minority Report (see Getting touchy-feely with Ultrahaptics).

It’s also capturing more funds from investors who clearly see the potential. The Bristol-based company has just raised £17.9m in series B funding, led by current investors IPP Group, Woodford Investment Management and new investors including Japaneseelectronics distributor CornesTechnologies and Dolby Family Ventures. It adds to a £11.3m series A investment made in the company in November 2015.

The technology itself is already being used in R&D programmes with high end automotive manufacturers, where the company has developed connected car concepts with both Bosch and Harman, to industrial controls, medical interfaces, and immersive augmented and virtual reality environments.

With all the hype around voice assistant technology like Amazon’s Alexa, it’s exciting to see another new communication interface emerging. We can see touchless technology like this becoming a natural user interface where precision is required - think in-car controls, industrial and household appliance controls or hospital/medical environments. It could easily augment voice in many wider situations too.

Ultrahaptics is at the bleeding edge of tech in this space, and it’s great to see this innovation coming out of the UK. We think it has massive potential. TechMarketView subscribers can read our detailed analysis of Ultrahaptics in our LBB9 report. They are also highlighted in our recent LBB100 report as one to watch.

Seven suppliers, including two SMEs, have been awarded a place on the Solution Provider Framework issued by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).

The MPS expects to commission approximately 10 projects a year through the framework, which is valued at £250m to £350m over four-years. Whilst it was developed for the MPS, it will be available for use by the rest of MOPAC (Mayor's Office for Policing And Crime), the Greater London Authority, the Police ICT Company and all other UK police authorities.

Example projects put through the framework, which will mainly be awarded through mini-competitions, include: asset management platform upgrade, information management transformation, public access improvements, mobility enhancements, and the digitisation of assets and records.

The MPS received applications from 15 suppliers and eventually selected seven for the framework. These included five big players: Accenture, BAE Systems, Capita, IBM and Leidos, and two SMEs: SCISYS and Informed Solutions.    

Andy Whitehead, Divisional Director of Enterprise Solutions & Defence for SCISYS said: "This is a potential game changer for SCISYS in the MPS; our long-standing relationship with the MPS gives us a great platform to bring benefits to their business through this new framework.”

Digital transformation is a key component of the MPS’s drive for greater efficiency, but it still has work to do in this area. Its latest update to the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee reported that the Digital Policing overspend had increased by £6m to £30.3m in addition to using £24m worth of reserves.