Outsourcing contract disputes set to rise due to credit crunch

Outsourcing contracts could be under strain due to the financial strains put on companies because of the credit crunch. It could lead to contracts being renegotiated, reduced in scope or even terminated by 2009 as companies look at tightening their belts.

It is also believed that long term transformation projects could hit blocks as companies look at short term plans while the stability of the economy is uncertain.

It is recommended that businesses review their outsourcing contracts so they know their options and what their contract involves. This allows them to look at get-out clauses and put effective strategies in place to try and deal with the difficult economical times which could be ahead.

Royal Mail unveils plans to spend £1.2bn on IT

With the economy in the situation that it is it may be a bit of a surprise that Royal Mail have unveiled plans that they intend to spend £1.2 billion on IT related projects in the next three to four years. The reasoning behind this is the increasing competition that it faces.

Chief information officer of the Royal Mail said that a robust IT and logistics system will allow the organisation to develop new markets. This is especially the case with Royal Mails capacity to deliver the right item to the right person.

Some of the money is being spent on new wireless terminals for delivery drivers to record customer’s confirmation of the delivery of their parcel. They are also spending money on new sorting machines which will allow for standard mail to be sorted quicker and more efficiently. In total the Royal Mail have 10 to 20 IT projects on the go.

It is refreshing to see such an investment in IT and it will important to follow the progress of Royal Mails IT investment to see if their new IT strategy is effective.

The new Windows 7 is on Track

There is no better way to start the week then telling you about Microsoft’s claim that the new Windows 7 is on track and is expected to be finalised and ready for consumers as expected by 2010.

Microsoft’s Windows head Bill Veghte told Wall Street analysts at Microsoft’s annual analysts meeting that the new windows program would be released as expected by 2010.

He also said that this stayed with the promise made by Microsoft that it would be released three years after the release of Microsoft Vista which has been heavily criticised by many IT specialists.

The meeting also raised the point that IE 8 would be released in its final form by the end of this year. This should please Microsoft fans as they look to explore the new features created by Microsoft.

Smaller Businesses don’t take security seriously

A survey by McAfee of 500 companies has showed that Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) do not take their system security seriously.

SME’s expressed that they didn’t feel they would be targeted by cybercriminals as they were too small.

The sample of 500 IT decision makers from companies with 1,000 to 2,000 employees expressed that small and medium sized businesses have been attacked at least 4 times in the last 3 years.

The survey showed that a quarter of these attacks took the business at least a week to recover. This should highlight the need for SME’s to think about their system security.

44% of the respondents revealed that they thought that it was only an issue for larger organisations and they do not believe that they would be affected.

Therefore think twice the next time you don’t take your security seriously. BACK are happy to assist with your system security needs if required. Simply give us a call.

Outsourcing worth £44bn as it grows 10%

According to half year figures outsourcing has grown by 10% taking it to £44bn. The study was carried out from countries within Europe, Middle East and Africa. Over 34 contracts were signed which were worth more than £100m for the first half of the year compared with 51 for the whole of 2007 and 38 for 2006.

It was the telecommunications sector that was the highest outsourcer compared against finance and manufacturing. The outsourcing market as a whole is growing un-evenly with a lot of American businesses not signing long term contracts since 2006. The market is also changing with telecommunications and energy companies signing long term contracts whereas retail, financial and business service sectors are signing contracts for relatively less money.

It was also found by the TPI that a lot of businesses are outsourcing to firms from the Indian subcontinent. So why not contact BACK today to see if we can be part of your outsourcing plan.

Trojan used in fake F1 star crash story

Today sees a new Trojan which is being spread through spam emails about the crash of a F1 star. The email contains a video of the supposed crash of F1 star Fernando Alonso. There was no crash and the story is fake but as soon as someone views the video malware is installed onto the user’s computer. Therefore users should be aware of these emails being spread around.

It appears that virus writers like to use news stories to spread viruses using real life and made up stories. At the start of the month a similar scam was pulled with a fake story about the beginning of world war 3. These stories contain malicious malware through planting key-stroking software onto the user’s computer. The virus writer is then able to find out individuals online banking details which can lead to further chaos for the user.

The message to users would be to be very careful about what stories you read and also ensure not to open any suspicious emails. Also ensure you have suitable anti-virus software on machines to try and prevent any such attack.

Mobile broadband on the up as BT and O2 create a new managed network

In a bid to improve mobile broadband BT has announced a new managed solutions agreement with O2 whereby BT will provide and manage high speed connectivity for O2 users.

BT will design and deliver a communications infrastructure that is designed to enable them to manage an increase in network traffic as new headsets are bandwidth intensive.

BT believes their next generation network service will be better matched to their customers needs providing a more flexible package with costs matching actual traffic and revenue increases.

One typical service will be O2 business broadband which O2 launched on 1st May this year. The service is compatible with BT analogue lines and aims to allow a small office to access the internet and stay connected.

With download speeds of up to 20 Mbps, O2 claims that Business broadband will offer some of the best connections for businesses in the UK.

Microsoft office suite dumped for Google apps

Googles continuing success is beginning to spread throughout the business world as some organisations move from traditional applications such as Microsoft office and move to new more functional Google applications.

Following a 6 month trial the journalist group Telegraph have migrated away from the static Microsoft office suite to the cheaper, online and more diverse Google applications. After the trial they found that the Google application was better suited to the busy, travelling journalists who could do their work on the go. The application will be used to share documents and access emails. This follows a similar move by construction company Taylor Woodrow.

Could this start the spiral of decline for Microsoft as Google grows in size?

Employees using social networking sites increases IT security risk

Compared to last year there are twice as many employees using social networking sites whilst at work. 27% of UK employees visited social networking sites using their companies’ networks in a survey carried out in 2008. This compared to only 11% in 2007.

Sites with user generated content are far more open to attacks as they provide an easy way to trap users into downloading malicious applications. They can install spyware onto user’s computers without them even knowing. Therefore, there is a great risk to organisations systems and therefore appropriate actions should be taken.

Companies should either stop employees from using the sites or should ensure they have adequate security in place to ensure that they can deal with any attacks.

UK at bottom of Open Source adoption league

Research carried out by Forrester has found that the UK was bottom in the adoption of open source software with an adoption rate of only 15%.

France was found to be top of the table with 24% of companies taking onboard open source software.

It was found that organisations are adopting open source software because of the cost benefits that are yielded.

The only good news for the UK was that it is expected that it will take over Canada within the next 12 months moving them from the bottom of the league.

IE Explorer 6 users to be aware of flaw

It has been revealed that there is a flaw with the new internet explorer 6 browser. The issue is believed to be concerned with the way the browser deals with cross-site scripting attacks.

The user is left open to attack because the security protections will not function correctly. This is because the code is embedded into a specially crafted HTML document.

Attackers could steal cookies and other security information without the user being made away of these actions.

Experts have said that users should ensure that they update their browser to the latest version to ensure that they avoid any issues. Alternatively, if a user does not want to upgrade their browser than they should ensure they disable scripting so that they are not affected by the flaw.

IT departments point the finger at Senior Managers

It has been claimed that senior managers are the worst offenders when it comes to contacting their IT department for personal technology problems and requests.

Half of IT managers spend at least 10% of their time in the office dealing with technology problems for senior members of staff. Therefore questioning the need for more IT training to senior staff.

A quarter of IT managers also said that instant messaging technology was becoming more popular in the workplace and was becoming an issue for IT departments. Staff are using it more and more for personal use and are seen to be spreading office gossip and in some cases impersonating other colleagues.

It is believed that businesses are targeting the use of Facebook by employees but are ignoring bigger problems which are caused by instant messaging. The story will go on and IT departments will live in hope that one day instant messaging will be banned within the office environment.

As the Credit Crunch takes hold, he who dares wins

As the credit crunch begins to take hold it can be worrying times for IT professionals as organisations see their budgets slashed and less money to spend on development of systems. As the belts get tighter it is believed that organisations will look more into outsourcing high value-add functions like business processes, application development and IT operations.

Although many businesses are wary of spending money on IT and outsourcing it could prove to be very advantageous when the market turns around. Investing in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) could see businesses cut costs and concentrate their resources on core business areas.

It also allows organisations to sell off assets and cut operational costs straight from their balance sheets. It therefore seems like there is no better time to contact BACK consulting who specialise in application development, IT operations and BPO. Why not contact us today and have a chat with our friendly sales team.

Firms waste £3.5bn a year through poorly managed IT investments

UK businesses are failing to maximise the value of their investments, potentially wasting £3.5bn a year says consultancy KPMG.

Therefore there is no better time to get in contact with BACK consulting to ensure your business makes the most of its IT investments.

A third of IT projects fail to deliver the expected benefits from their system or application, and over half of all projects over run. As a result of this 90% believe that IT is not bringing them the rewards that they believed it would.

Research among 125 IT decision workers found that 32% of them indicated that projects are decided on an ad-hoc basis with no or little co-ordination between IT and business planning.

Microsoft issue four new security patches

Microsoft will issue four new security patches to address vulnerabilities in SQL server database platform, the Exchange email server and the Windows operating system.

The patches will be released as part of Microsoft’s monthly security patching schedule on 8th July 2008.

None of the four patches have been listed as “critical” by Microsoft but they are deemed as being important.

A critical patch is more urgent as remote attackers can take advantage of the vulnerability without any user interaction.

Therefore, IT staff will have more time to ensure the security patches are on their system.

BT chase the title

Days after O2 topped a new survey of broadband speed BT has offered to speed up their broadband service. A service launched by BT offers to speed up broadband connection or “your money back”. However, this has been branded expensive.

As part of BT’s home IT support service they have pledged to speed up their service by 0.5Mbps. This is under the BT broadband accelerator service that offers to investigate reasons for a slow connection. Engineers will come out to individuals homes to try and investigate reasons which they believe are slowing the internet connection down. BT believes that through doing this they can achieve 0.5Mbps improvement for individuals.

However, it has been branded expensive with individuals having to pay a price tag of £90 for the service. It seems that there could be a battle beginning to gain the honour of fastest Internet Service Provider.

Blink and you will miss it!

O2 has topped a new survey of broadband speeds. Tests were carried out on connection speeds for 16 different Internet Service Providers (ISP). The tests were carried out in May on over 20,000 different lines and O2 triumphed to victory.

The average speed achieved for their 8Mbps package was 5.39Mbps. However, there is great concern that consumers are not getting what they pay for. This is because the average connection speed in Britain is on 2.97Mbps.

Although O2 is top of the league for ISPs broadband in Britain is still lagging especially when the majority of service providers only provide half the advertised speed

So if you want to win the race, it seems O2 is the one to back.

Digital Dictation – Dictating the future!

Digital Dictation is a technology that is growing as more and more legal firms take the technology on board.

All firms who use digital dictation seem convinced that they have made savings and become more efficient with the introduction of Digital Dictation. Westminister firm Campbell Hooper claims that they have made savings of £400,000 in three years with the introduction of digital dictation.

There is a huge worldwide and low-end market yet to be tapped into, and it is quite possible that a major player such as Apple may enter the market, linking its iPhone, speech recognition and digital dictation technology to deliver a more affordable solution to a much bigger client base.

Therefore, why not jump on the band wagon and also take advantage of digital dictation.