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IBM launches its Blockchain platform

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logoAt July’s European Blockchain summit, IBM showed that it meant business in Blockchain, highlighting the technology’s potential and emphasising its broad experience in this nascent technology. They have now made another major step forward by launching the IBM Blockchain Platform.

This “fully-integrated, enterprise-ready blockchain platform” is based on Hyperledger Fabric V1 technology and is delivered and supported via the IBM Cloud. This offering is currently aimed at providing “permissioned” distributed ledger networks (rather than implementing “full-fat” blockchains which will surely follow).

IBM has also announced a major initiative in food safety, connecting ten leading (mainly US-based) food manufacturers and retailers and their supply chains. This consortium will identify opportunities in the food supply industry to quickly, accurately and securely monitor the flow of foodstuffs to improve quality, reduce waste and promote health and safety imperatives. This implementation is an excellent example of the potential benefits of blockchain, which allows the storage and rapid communication of secure, immutable and trusted data across an extensive ecosystem.

IBM currently has 9 live networks in operation across trade finance (BoAML and HSBC) and logistics (Maersk), financial markets (DTCC, JPX, CLS) and transactions/payment management (Union Pay, MUFG, Mizuho) in addition to the Food safety initiative.

IBM aims to capitalise on its head-start in offering a ready-to-go blockchain, exploiting its customer base and IBM Cloud’s reach. It will leverage 1,600 consultants across Global Business Services to promote and implement blockchains. It is also offering access to its blockchain network and expertise free of charge to 1,000 universities, in order to build a development community and to become ingrained as a preferred route to blockchain. Other companies will develop competitive offerings, but IBM’s approach and market-stimulating initiative will mean that many aspiring blockchain providers and users will look to IBM for leadership.


Muted response to Salesforce Q2; international sales targeted for growth

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logoDespite another quarter of strong growth that nudged ahead of market expectations, it seems Salesforce cannot do enough to meet over inflated expectations. Slight beats on revenue and net income in Q218 resulted in a 1%-2% fall in its share price in after market trading as investors appeared to want even more, even though the company delivered a 26% increase in both net revenue ($2.6bn) and deferred revenue ($4.8bn), and managed a small but welcome net income sum of $17.7m, following several acquisitions. Love for Salesforce waned after its year ago results too, but it was not so severe this time around.

With revenue of Sales Cloud at $886m and Service Cloud coming in at $698m, these two still lead the revenue pack, with Platform (and Other) contributing $466m. Marketing and Commerce delivered $317m in revenue.

The question around Salesforce is how it will maintain its hyper growth, especially now it has hit the big time with a $10bn revenue run rate and has raised FY18 revenue guidance by $100m to $10.4bn. One of the growth prospects is the relatively new acquisition enabled Commerce business, another is Einstein as it builds intelligence into its products – this will be big news at Dreamforce in November. It has made fine progress in terms of cross sales and large enterprise activity but one area where it is still underweight is international sales.

Currently only 30% of its business is outside its home territory and this percentage has not been increasing, even though its UK business continues to head upwards (aided by local data centres), as shown in the Enterprise Software & Application Services Supplier Rankings 2017 report. Its relationship with Amazon Web Services appears to be delivering benefits in countries like Canada and Australia and it has stepped up hiring outside the US. The international sales metric is one that needs to start moving if Salesforce is to maintain the high growth levels expected of it – and that puts system integrators into a promising position.

Coretx makes PACT with cyber security devil

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Coretx invests £750k in cyber security unitCroydon-headquartered managed services company Coretx continued its recent expansion push, now investing £750k in setting up a dedicated cyber security division.

The Protection Against Cyber Threats (PACT) business unit comprises a security operations centre (SOC) and 10 internally trained security specialists. It will host new cloud-based security information and events management (SIEM) and advanced threat protection (ATP) platforms alongside endpoint protection and security planning services.

Coretx (previously known as Castle Street Investments), has been busy on the acquisition front of late, snapping up rival mid-market managed services firm 365IT for £5.4m earlier this year.

On this occasion, management felt that developing its cyber security practice in-house rather than buying it in from elsewhere would get new products to market more quickly whilst creating long term value for its shareholders however.

The implementation and maintenance of effective cyber security defences remains a top priority for UK firms wary of the damaging fallout associated with high profile hacks and data breaches (subscribers can read our Market Trends and Forecasts 2017-2020 report for a more detailed analysis).

Coretx is confident it can mine that extant demand, predicting PACT will be profitable as early as H118 by which time it expects to have 30 customers on-board. That suggests to us the company already has upselling deals involving its existing managed services clients in the pipeline.

But we think the real test of its success will depend on its ability to attract new mid-market customers to PACT amidst growing interest in the SMB/SME space from rival MSPs and much larger cyber security players like Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro.

Sopheon rises on better H1

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lSopheon's turnaround appears to be bearing fruit for the AIM-listed enterprise innovation management provider. Following its positive update in June (see here), Sopheon delivered a return to revenue and profit growth for the first half, and a 5% rise in its share price.

Revenues for the six months to 30 June were up 8.7% to $12.5m, and operating profits were up 8% to $1.8m. The growth was driven by a jump in licence sales, which were up to 28 vs. 20 last time, for some big names like Electrolux, Honeywell, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble and Merck. This is despite increasing headcount to help scale the business further. It’s provided a much better revenue outlook too, which now stands at $20.3m for the full year vs. $18.4m this time last year.

Sopheon's stated mission is to help its customers achieve ‘long-term growth and profitability through sustainable innovation’. Its technology aims to help corporations unlock valuable information hidden away in legacy silos throughout the business.

The strategy is being built around the traditional global end-to-end enterprise Accolade solution, and the newer ‘out-of-the-box’ Accolade Express for quicker time to value. The aim is to provide tools to support innovation management and new product development, including strategic innovation planning, roadmapping, idea and concept development, process and project management, portfolio management and resource planning. Critical tools for enterprises needing to pivot to digital at speed.

Ajax pounces on digital consultancy ThoughtWorks

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logoBritish HQ’d PE Apax Partners is to add US consulting firm ThoughtWorks to its portfolio of investments as it hooks into the growth area of digital transformation consulting and software development, and expertise in enablers like DevOps, agile, continuous development and integration and micro services. The deal is expected to close in Q4.

Terms were not disclosed but having been in business for two decades, and until this move being founder run, ThoughtWorks is well established with 4500 employees across 42 offices in 15 countries. ThoughtWorks styles its approach as one of ‘creative technology’, with a focus on constant invention and constant delivery, an approach that is in demand by enterprises looking for business agility. Apax plans to keep the existing management team and approach intact. Blogs by employees say the company has had several approaches from private equity companies and well known IT services firms.

A creative approach is a key attribute of successful digital transformation and one of the skills traditional IT services suppliers are striving to master with investments in design thinking and technology approaches like DevOps, so we can see how ThoughtWorks could have been in demand. Creativity is something up and coming and fast growing IT services provider Endava demonstrates too. With new funding from Apax, ThoughtWorks, who already has a presence in the UK, could become a stronger force in the UK market. 

Choppy waters calming down at Access Intelligence

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LogoCorporate communications and reputation management platform provider Access Intelligence is making progress now it has slimmed down through the sale of assets such as Due North and AlControlPoint and refocused around the Vuelio comms platform (see here and work back for the history of its changes). As a result, it has seen a needed improvement in customer retention and new sales, evidenced by a £0.2m increase in Vuelio’s annual contract value base in May 2017 and a further £0.1m in July. Importantly, the metric is trending in the right direction, having increased by £0.3m by July with a further £0.3m expected in the final four months of the year.

Although there has been noticeable progress in the six months to May 31 2017 in terms of investment and customer value, it has not all been plain sailing. Revenue from continuing operations dropped to £4.1m from £5.1m as some acquired customers decided not to migrate to Vuelio. A conscious - and wise - decision by Access Intelligence management to exit non-profitable contracts was also a contributory factor. This impacted the bottom line, with the loss from continuing operations deepening to £1.8m.

Currently working on consolidation following its restructuring activity, Access Intelligence believes it will start to see benefits to its cost base from September onwards. Post the reporting period it did raise £1.2m (gross) so the waters are still choppy, although calming down. Its own reputation and success now rests on the comms and reputation focused Vuelio platform.

Data centre sales boost VMware Q2 numbers

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Data centre sales boost VMware Q2 numbersHaving telegraphed the good news with a preliminary earnings release last week VMware posted strong second quarter results.

The virtualisation software specialist grew its revenue 12 % yoy to US$1.9bn compared to the last comparable quarter prior to parent company EMC’s merger with Dell.

License revenue (up 14% to US$732m) grew at a slightly faster pace than services revenue (up 11% to US$1.2bn), with operating income increasing 5% to US$338m and net income up 26% to US$334m.

Software maintenance still makes up the bulk of that service revenue in Q2, representing 53.4% of total turnover at US$1bn. That suggests to us that despite an ongoing decline in its vSphere business, VMware may still doing a good job of keeping customers on existing platforms whilst attracting new customers to its NSX network virtualisation, VSAN virtual storage, VX Rail hyperconvergence offerings and AirWatch enterprise mobility management suite.

The positive numbers caused VMware to once again revise its full year revenue expectations upwards, this time to US$7.8bn which would represent a 10% increase on the US$7.1bn posted in FY16. The organisational shake-up following the Dell acquisition of VMware parent EMC in September appears to be having a positive initial effect.

Only time will tell if VMware can continue its current momentum. But for now its core portfolio - including NSX, VSAN and the VX Rail hyper convergence product coupled with a healthy dose of cross-selling - looks well placed to capitalise on continuing demand for data centre infrastructure upgrades from both big spending cloud service providers and large enterprises.

Infosys goes back for its future … again!

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logoIt’s ‘all hands off deck’ for beleaguered Infosys with much of the board resigning to make way for the immediate (re)appointment of co-founder, past CEO and past co-chairman Nandan Nilekani as (sole) chairman. Such is the aftermath of the resignation last Friday of CEO Dr Vishal Sikka, whose exit was in effect engineered by Infosys co-founder and industry luminary Narayanan Murthy (see Infosys CEO exit – right answer, wrong reason).

Sikka, who was nominally appointed Executive Vice-Chairman after his ousting (assumedly some sort of face-saving title) has now resigned entirely from the Board, as have the Chairman and some of the independent directors. The Co-Chairman also stood down but remains on the Board.

Bringing back Nilekani smacks of a previous attempt back in June 2013 to right the wrongs of prior flawed CEO appointments when the Infosys board sidelined then CEO, SD Shibulal (‘Shibu’), by reinstalling Murthy – then Chairman Emeritus – as Executive Chairman (see Infosys goes back for its future). The key result of that stroke of genius was Murthy’s appointment of Sikka as CEO about a year later, whom he then proceeded to undermine.

As far as I am concerned, Nilekani was the last of the Infosys co-founders who truly deserved to become CEO, a role he undertook from 2002 to 2007. He handed over the reins fortuitously ahead of the global economic crisis and subsequently took on a Cabinet-ranking role in the Indian Government. Meanwhile, his co-founder successors (by right of the “It’s Buggins’ Turn” school of leadership) ‘Kris’ Gopalakrishnan, and then Shibu, were left in the unenviable position of managing Infosys through the downturn, and were unfortunately not the right men for the job.

Nilekani will have the task to rebuild the Board and lead the search for a new CEO, while trying to steady the ship – and client and investor nerves. But as much as I admire Nilekani, his appointment just cannot be the right answer, just as it wasn’t with Murthy in 2013.

I’ll have an in-depth analysis of the ‘Sikka Years’, and the prospects for Infosys beyond, in the next edition of OffshoreViews.


Quarter of Whitehall SITS spend via Digital Marketplace

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GCloud spend data websiteUK Government has released data on spend through the G-Cloud framework through to the end of July 2017. Sales since the framework was launched in 2012 now total £2.4b. The key takeaway is that while sales have continued to increase, the rate of increase has slowed. That is true even if you include other Digital Marketplace sales, through the Digital Outcomes & Services (DOS) framework (and its predecessors, Digital Services and Digital Services 2). Extrapolating 2017 data – for all the Digital Marketplace frameworks - indicates that year-on-year growth is set to be 27% (to around £1.2b) this year. That compares to 54% in 2016 and 69% in 2015. The vast majority (c60%) of spend continues to be via the G-Cloud framework, however, the figures do indicate some spend shifting to DOS.

Putting the figures in context, the predicted spend through these frameworks in 2017 equates to around 10-11% of spend by the UK public sector on software and IT services (see UK public sector SITS: market forecast preview 2016-2020). The frameworks continue to be favoured predominantly by Whitehall. And in central government (including defence), the proportion of spend via the frameworks equates to more than 23% of central government and defence SITS spend. That’s quite an impressive figure considering the amount of legacy ICT that government departments and agencies must continue to support. With that proportion of Whitehall ICT spend already going through the framework, and a continued struggle to direct the wider public sector towards the Digital Marketplace, it’s little wonder that growth has slowed. The figure will also reflect the continued drive to take money out of the ICT ‘run’ element (with many organisations targeting 30-40% savings) so that monies can be reinvested in digital transformation.

Finally, a word on the spend with large suppliers versus SMEs. The proportion of spend via SMEs (49% of those companies classified since the G-Cloud started) is largely unchanged (it was 48% to date in 2017). In the latest data, an SME – Equal Experts– tops the tables in terms of total spend via the G-Cloud framework. Offering bespoke digital development, the company has grown its business through the G-Cloud impressively: sales increased from £12m in 2014 to £36m in 2016, and so far in 2017, they stand at £25m. However, 88% of its sales have been through HMRC. Another SME (though arguably it has outgrown the category now) is Methods– its 2nd place standing isn’t immediately apparent until you take account of sales via its numerous busineses. In total, Methods businesses have had G-Cloud sales of c£55m over the life of the framework (see UK public sector SITS supplier rankings 2017). Unlike Equal Experts, Methods has a much broader range of clients across different areas of the public sector. The highest ranking ‘large’ supplier is Deloitte (at #3); with similar sales to Methods, it also has a wide G-Cloud sales footprint across multiple organisations. Others ranking in the ‘Top 10’ by G-Cloud sales include UKCloud, BJSS, Capgemini, IBM, Mastek and Kainos. PublicSectorViews subscribers can learn about the progress of these players in our recently published UK public sector SITS supplier rankings 2017 report.

Strong H1 growth for Computacenter

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Strong H1 growth for ComputacenterImproved operational performance and currency movements helped push Computacenter’s H117 revenue up 15% yoy (9% in constant currency) to £1.7bn. Adjusted pre-tax profits increased by 66% (59% in constant currency) to £42m, with adjusted earnings per share up 67% to 25.6p. The company’s shares rose by as much as 19% in early trading on the news.

The impact of currency movements on Computacenter’s results reflects the company’s global operations, with 60% of turnover coming from Germany, France and Belgium (and 45% from Germany alone).

As in Q117, Germany remains the runaway success with the UK business seeing more marginal gains. Both UK supply chain revenue and professional and managed services revenue grew 5% yoy to £428m and £249m respectively, boosted by public sector activity and two significant 5-year contract renewals with large industrial and retail customers.

The Hatfield-headquartered infrastructure services provider is looking forward to “very successful” FY17 due to the strength and volume of contract wins and renewals booked in the first half and anticipated traction from its security and cloud offerings.

Even so Computacenter was keen to temper expectations by pointing out that it had a particularly weak first half in 2016 when it saw notable declines in its services business. Chief executive Mike Norris does not expect to repeat the H117 performance in either H217 or H118, despite professing himself “never more optimistic about the market’s potential”.

Nothing is guaranteed and as we point out in our UK Software and IT Suppliers Rankings 2016 Report, Computacenter must prove it can still survive lean times as enterprise buyers put constant price pressure on IS contract value whilst simultaneously competing with Fujitsu and India-centric players such as HCL, Infosys, TCS and WiPro for a shrinking number of large deals.

Join us for Drinks and Dinner

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Sage company logoWe look forward to welcoming well over two hundred CXOs from the world of UK tech and beyond to our flagship event, An Evening with TechMarketView, in October. The 2017 event is held in association with Sage and will take place at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in Portland Place, London on Thursday 5th October, commencing at 6:30 pm with welcome drinks.

This will be followed by an hour of valuable foresight from the TechMarketView analyst team on the prospects for tech suppliers in the UK market in 2018 and beyond, especially in the context of ‘Unlocking the Intelligence’, our theme which embraces the transformational potential afforded by digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive computing.

We would then like to welcome you to a drinks reception ahead of a sumptuous three-course dinner. During the evening, there will be plenty of opportunity for networking with other ‘movers and shakers’ in UK tech.

The Evening with TechMarketView has been a sell-out for the last four years so book early to secure your place. 

We hope you can join the TechMarketView team, and of course our esteemed chairman Richard Holway MBE and managing partner, Anthony Miller, at what so many executives tell us is the one industry event they simply can’t afford to miss!

For full details and to book your place visit tx2Events here or contact event coordinator Tina Compton at tx2Events (tina.compton@tx2events.com).

TechMarketView Evening 2016

*NEW RESEARCH* – UK BPS Market Size and Forecasts 2017

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lGrowth in the UK Business process services (BPS) market is slowing considerably due to the deflationary impacts of Intelligent Automation, Digital and the resulting re-shoring, insourcing, and hybrid as-as-a-service models.

Brexit adds to the uncertainty we are now seeing across the UK BPS market, and it is having a negative impact on both public and private sector outsourcing spend.

We expect BPS to grow at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 3.2% between 2016 and 2020 to be worth £9.9b. However this is still ahead of other horizontal areas within the UK SITS market (see UK SITS Market Trends & Forecasts 2017-2020).

Traditional ‘lift-and-shift’ BPO is now very much a legacy model, in terminal decline. It used to dominate the BPS market. We now expect it to decline -4.1% over the period, and continue that downward trend thereafter.

Against this providers are going to have to look to new sources of revenue opportunity to rebuild and regrow.

Data, intelligence and analytical insights will be critical here, as will platforms and Business Process-as -a-Service (BPaaS) utilities that can manage and operate disparate systems and processes flexibly. People will also play a vital role, however they will become far more like overseers and managers of processes, relaying intelligence back and forth, and supplying answers to the toughest questions.

Subscribers to BusinessProcessViews can read our latest anchor report providing detailed analysis of the trends and opportunities in UK BPS Market Trends & Forecasts 2017.

365 Agile joins Dearly Departed (finally)

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logologoIt’s been a long goodbye for ‘Internet of Things’ play, 365 Agile, whose shares finally delisted from AIM this morning. The company announced it was closing down operations a year ago to become a cash shell after things started going horribly wrong (see 365 Agile grinds to a halt). Attempts to find a suitable entity to reverse in came to naught and then time ran out.

One of the few disappointments for core investors MXC Capital.

Brexit moving front and centre for UK banks

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brexitAs UK bank and insurance chiefs return from their holidays, they will know that there are many decisions outstanding as their companies prepare for a post-Brexit world. They will also read that Brexit negotiations are going badly. The latest talks began with EU complaints about lack of clarity in the UK’s position and the refusal to discuss financial settlement, an early EU priority.

Also earlier this month, the European Central Bank (ECB) highlighted the lack of progress made by UK banks in implementing Brexit contingency plans, particularly in recovery and resolution planning (what to do should a business go pear-shaped) and risk management. The ECB also want to deter the use of “shell-companies”, conducting trade in a EU state without sufficient local resources and capital.

As banks and insurers decide on re-location strategies, they are faced with real issues about the availability of suitable premises (with Dublin presenting particular problems) and the problem of recruiting or moving staff.

These concerns and delays have massive implications for the sector’s technology. It seems unlikely that financial services companies will be able to avoid introducing yet another layer of complexity into their systems as they resort to miscellaneous updates, patches and work-arounds to meet regulatory and Brexit-determined deadlines. Banks’ internal IT resources will be even more stretched and will need help as they reinforce international operations, thus providing larger SITS suppliers with opportunities as business shifts into European markets and some UK operations are trimmed (see our FS comment in our latest UK SITS Market Trends and Forecasts which also highlights slower growth in the UK).

The overall Brexit impact on UK SITS providers is analysed in our July survey, Brexit: the impact on UK SITS suppliers. For a Brexit overview, see Brexit: The implications)

Embattled InterQuest warns again

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logoThe ‘case for the prosecution’ for the MBO bid led by Gary Ashworth, chairman and founder of AIM-listed UK IT recruitment InterQuest, got even stronger today with news of yet another profit warning. Ashworth’s buyout vehicle, Chisbridge, had already garnered 58% of InterQuest’s voting rights, but needed 75% in order to delist the shares from AIM (see Embattled InterQuest arrives in No-Man’s-Land).

The current warning blames all the usual suspects for business underperformance – Brexit, hung parliament, total eclipse of the sun (OK, not that) – which have particularly affected InterQuest’s core Financial Services contractor market. InterQuest had warned a couple of months ago it was likely to drop future dividend payments (see here).

It’s probably time now for lone dissenting NED, David Higgins, to throw in the towel and accept the inevitable.


Exec moves at Getronics following its acquisition

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getronicsFollowing the acquisition of Getronics by Brazilian backers, Bottega InvestCo, Group CEO, Mark Cook, will move into a Vice Chairman role. Cook has been absolutely instrumental in the corporate journey Getronics has undertaken over the past few years. It’s made five important acquisitions, which have helped it broaden its portfolio of services across Europe.

With a richer portfolio (i.e. far removed from its heritage in break/fix and support services) and deeper set of capabilities, Getronics has sealed a number of impressive deals over the recent past (see Getronics deals reflect depth and breadth of services). It was therefore not a huge surprise that previous owners, Aurelius, sold to Bottegga – again, something Cook was heavily involved with. Bottega clearly values Cook’s experience as he will play a key role in strategic planning and M&A activity going forward.

Getronics will now get a new CEO in the UK (Cook had overseen the UK business previously). Paul Fox will take on the role having previously been responsible for new business sales in the UK and global business development activities.

See where Getronics places in our IT Services Ranking: UK SITS Supplier Rankings 2017.

Security for a better way to protect business and data (Sponsored Post)

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HPE company logoIn a recent article on forbes.com, industry analyst Patrick Moorhead discusses how to better protect your business. He notes that security is a constantly moving target and the players, techniques and remedies change over and over. Compute clients and networks were the soft spot five years ago but now it's the server. Hackers go after the soft spots.

That’s why we created the world’s most secure industry-standard servers. The claim is 100% true is built in. You may ask: How’s that?

At HPE, we own our own silicon. Most vendors don’t. In each Gen10 server, we created a unique silicon fingerprint. A server will not boot unless the firmware matches the print. It’s just locked. We’re the only vendor who can do this.

We also embedded proactive detection and recovery. Our server is an active spy. It performs daily scans of millions of lines of code to detect any malware, and can recover automatically from threats.

Then we applied machine learning to malicious behaviors, using technology from our NIARA acquisition. The system trains itself to relentlessly learn. Again and again. We analyze patterns to identify suspicious activity. Think of it this way: You don’t have to be paranoid anymore. We do that for you.

Finally, we even planned for the server being decommissioned. When that time comes, we make sure that the data can no longer be reconstructed or retrieved. We protect it forever.

Read the full post

#Gen10 | #security | #Hybrid IT

HPE Genesis Banner Advert

*New Research* Public Sector Opportunities Bulletin - August 2017

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Opportunities Bulletin August 2017During the course of our everyday research, the PublicSectorViews team picks up on new developments in the UK public sector market that don’t make it into UKHotViews. In particular, we often become aware of interesting opportunities, contract notices or sources of funding. These developments don’t get ignored; we use them to form our views within our core research (for example UK Public Sector SITS Market Trends & Forecasts) and we bring some of the key announcements together in our regular PublicSectorViews Opportunities Bulletin.

The August 2017 Opportunities Bulletin starts with the health and care sector, where we have seen several announcements concerning NHS modernisation and innovation in 2017. The government is prioritising investment in health and care ahead of most other areas of the public sector and continues to see technology and innovation as core to the NHS’ transformation. We hope the innovation funding will provide SMEs with a better chance of engaging with the NHS, but contracts are still relatively small and the risk of opportunities fizzling out after pilot phase remains high.

The second article looks at central government opportunities, focusing on two recent Home Office contract notices relating to immigration technology. The task of reforming the technology that runs the UK’s immigration system has been a long and challenging process for the Home Office, and the EU referendum result has put further pressure on this reform. The need for a new immigration system to cope with the inevitable changes that Brexit will bring is clear, and any new system will require the requisite technology to be in place as a matter of urgency. 

PublicSectorViews subscribers can read our analysis by downloading August's Public Sector Opportunities Bulletin now

Advertising

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“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; trouble is I don’t know which half”. John Wanamaker (1838-1922)

AdvertisingAt least Mr Wanamaker didn’t have the effectiveness of online and social networking to consider. I was reminded of Wanamaker’s famous and much repeated quote when I read that Procter & Gamble had decided to cut its digital advertising spend by $100m in June and found that it had virtually no effect on its sales. P&G reckons that most of its digital ‘hits’ were from bots anyway.

I still find that TV ads are the most effective. Eg I can still recall most of the ads in last night’s Great British Bakeoff. The digital ads I get go largely unnoticed. Indeed the targeted ads I get on Facebook seem to be either as result of my wife’s recent searches/purchases (as we obvious share an IP address) or for something I have already purchased. Pretty useless really!

Of course I am many, many decades away from being a millennial. Millenials watch a faction of the TV compared to us oldies. Millenials are much more influenced by recommendations from their friends and review sites than any form of advertising. Hence the huge influence Vloggers have on the buying intentions of the young. (and, of course, the high effectiveness of Sponsored Posts on HotViews!) 

I have often reported on ‘upstart’ Tesla overtaking most of the ‘conventional’ motor manufacturers in market value. Today ASOS is within a whisker of achieving a market value of £5b and overtaking Marks & Spencer. As Amazon takes aim at the grocery business, many old supermarket companies have due cause to be very worried.

Maybe we are reaching a point where ALL money spent on advertising - conventional or digital - is wasted. To prosper - indeed to survive - needs a whole new way of influencing your customers.  

Apple intensifies enterprise ambitions with Accenture

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logologoThe freshly minted partnership between Accenture and Apple, which will see co-located teams build apps and services for iOS devices, is part of Apple’s campaign to increase its official footprint within the enterprise. In doing so it also hopes to challenge Microsoft’s position as the default OS within enterprises, as well as bat a proportion of Android devices aside.

In language similar to Microsoft, the duo talk about wanting to “delight” customers and create “incredible user experiences” as they design new types of applications and experiences. The emphasis is on the “new”, as opposed to optimising existing applications and business processes, with talk of using mobile apps to help make use of IoT data and bringing augmented reality on board for service and maintenance-type applications.

Of particular interest is the ambition to use the vast amounts of data enterprises hold, identifying fresh ways of using it via new workflows accessible from mobile devices. On the whole, enterprise mobile applications are not really pushing imaginative boundaries despite the scope for innovation via data driven apps, so the combination of data plus imaginative Apple and Accenture with its deep enterprise and extensive digital expertise could produce something noteworthy. Apple people will be located within Acceture Digital Studios. Add in Apple’s AI intentions (see Investors get excited about Apple’s AI intentions) and Accenture’s many investments in this area, and there is plenty of potential.

Apple already has partnerships with IBM, SAP and Cisco. The addition of Accenture brings another enterprise-centric heavyweight on board but to make the most of the relationships, it needs to bring relevant, differentiated data driven mobile applications to the corporate world. Expectations will be high. 

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