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The beginning of May marked the announcement of an offer to acquire the French IT services company, GFI Informatique by Fujitsu Services, and at the end of the month the offer was formalised for the entire issued share capital of the French company.
OpinionWire Articles - published 31/05/2007 - Alan Rodger
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GXS Trading Grid is a suite of on-demand Business-to-Business (B2B) integration and related services from which customers can select services that fit their requirements. B2B data exchange has long been regarded as something for large organisations only, and expensive for smaller ones to access, as well as tying up scarce IT resources.
Technology Audits - published 23/05/2007 - Teresa Jones
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looking to outsource software or systems initiatives to developing nations must consider a number of variables before deciding where to make their investment. Currently, the most popular options are India and Eastern Europe. However, China is catching up fast, as its status as the worlds most watched economy, combined with the markets lowest rates for outsourcers, makes it an increasingly exciting proposition.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 10/05/2007 - Annie Combelles
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I have just spent a fascinating hour or so comparing country-related facts at the CIA World Factbook Web site: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/. I looked at a number of industrialised nations as well as a number of African nations, and compared some facts across this admittedly subjective selection.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 10/05/2007 - Terry White
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Smartcards were once thought of as providing a solution for a problem that was yet to be found. This is no longer the case. Smartcards are now deployed for a variety of purposes, from chip and pin payment cards to identity management and authentication in the NHS patients record project.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 10/05/2007 - Sarah Burnett
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There are well in excess of 1,000 vendors operating in the IT Managed Services space, therefore the myriad of options available can make it confusing for organisations to decide which vendor is the right one for the Managed Service it is looking to source.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 08/05/2007 - Maxine Holt
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Alphacourt is a specialist integration consultancy providing a range of services that enable system integration and business process improvements, in parallel. Its aim is to always accelerate customers business performance by enhancing agility and responsiveness to change.
Technology Audits - published 25/04/2007 - Mark Blowers
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It was reported last week that Computacenter had extended its flagship IT services deal with BT Group to supply and manage its desktop infrastructure. The deal replaces an existing five-year contract that was due to expire at the end of March, which was worth around UK30 million annually to Computacenter.
OpinionWire Articles - published 05/04/2007 - Maxine Holt
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The model that led to Indias enviable success as an outsourcing location has now been copied or modified in many other countries world-wide consequently there are numerous low-cost, offshore providers to choose from. While having been ultimately no barrier to its great overall success, the distance of Indias location from many of its customer markets has been a stumbling block with some potential customers and, for European organisations, alternative low-cost provider locations such as the Philippine
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/04/2007 - Alan Rodger
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After many years of seemingly every shred of bad news about outsourcing being writ large, and nodded over knowingly by naysayers, a degree of increased maturity has helped improve the course and eventual fate of a greater proportion of engagements. Experience has taught the outsourcing industrys providers and customers some hard lessons, hopefully for the benefit of many organisations in the next few years. Quick bucks, sticking to the letter of the contract unless paid more, and one-size-fits-all deals ?SC? After many years
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/04/2007 - Alan Rodger
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The UK public sector is organised in a complex way, and has a culture that does not lend itself to centralised IT project specification and governance. This must be taken into account in large public sector IT projects if the chances of their success are to be improved. In this article, I propose a new approach that I call Proof-Win that is based on delivering a successful and realistic proof of concept, followed by extending the project only when the business case is proven and key stakeholders are wo
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/04/2007 - Sarah Burnett
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Managed IT Services are increasing in popularity, and the practice is already quite established in mid-sized organisations (500-1,500 employees). In the March 2007 issue of Butler Group Review we discussed The Improved face of Managed Services; however, not all organisations will find that Managed Services is the right option for them in all areas that Managed Services cover.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/04/2007 - Maxine Holt
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HCL Infrastructure Services Division (ISD) is a specialist in the rapidly growing outsourcing market area of remote infrastructure management, a service which it can offer from offshore locations, incorporating the price advantage of that model. However, the companys differentiating characteristics are far broader than simply lower costs, as it has a long-established practice that complements infrastructure management with a wide range of services that meet requirements throughout the outsourcing lifecy
Technology Audits - published 30/03/2007 - Alan Rodger
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Whilst driving to work earlier this week, I heard an article on the radio saying that around 12% of Internet users in the UK have been the victims of on-line fraud. I subsequently followed the article up on the BBCs Web site, to find it was being reported that fewer than half of the UKs 29 million adult Internet users believe that they are responsible for protecting personal information on-line.
OpinionWire Articles - published 29/03/2007 - Maxine Holt
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Some organisations look towards outsourcing to assist them in achieving their business objectives, and some prefer to retain the delivery of IT services in-house. However, Butler Group is seeing an increasing number of organisations not only using outsourcing to complement the services they are delivering in-house, but also implementing a multi-sourced model - that is, having a number of different providers deliver various aspects of IT requirements.
Technology Management and Strategy Reports - published 19/03/2007 - Alan Rodger, Maxine Holt, Teresa Jones, Tim Jennings
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Managed Services Providers (MSPs) deliver and manage network-based services, applications, and equipment to customer organisations. Managed services can be delivered as a one-to-many or one-to-one service; the former service being used by multiple customers, and the latter having a dedicated service between provider and customer. Payment for both of these services is generally on a usage basis; for example, the number of desktops supported, or the number of transactions processed.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/03/2007 - Maxine Holt
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In Accra, Ghana, there is a model example of private business serving public interests. This is the BusyInternet, the largest privately-owned ICT and Internet service centre in Africa. BusyInternet started in 2001, and represents a promising approach to helping Africans gain access to Internet, Information Technology, and Business services all under one roof. It is a fairly large roof at that, incorporating a 100 seat Internet caf, catered conference and training rooms, serviced offices and project ro
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/03/2007 - Terry White
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Towards the end of last month, Satyam, a Hyderabad-based IT services provider (and the fourth-largest in India), announced its quarterly results (covering October-December 2006) and was vilified on the stock market, with its shares falling 8%. Even though net profit increased 24.3% compared to the same quarter the previous year (after a subsidiary sale had been taken out of the calculation), investors were not happy with the results mainly because the results of its rivals have been better.
OpinionWire Articles - published 22/02/2007 - Maxine Holt
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Last week the UKs Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) published the results of a feasibility study, carried out on its behalf by London Libraries Development Agency (LLDA), for a single membership card for all of Londons public libraries. The card is likely to be a smartcard and the possibility of linkage with Oyster is being considered. Oyster is a smart ticketing solution that is successfully operated by Transport for London (TfL). There are over five million cards in circulation and it als
OpinionWire Articles - published 08/02/2007 - Sarah Burnett
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Patni Computer Systems (Patni) is the sixth largest of the Indian service provider companies in terms of scale. It has achieved impressive growth, and has a variety of service lines, ranging from ubiquitous types such as application-related services to less common variants such as product and engineering services. Organisations of all kinds are increasingly turning to outsourcing either to take everyday business or IT tasks off their hands, or to achieve more advanced objectives such as transformational
Technology Audits - published 05/02/2007 - Alan Rodger
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The Christmas on-line sales figures were announced last week. For the ten weeks running up to Christmas, UK consumers spent UK7.66 billion, which represents a 54% increase from the 2005 Christmas figures of UK4.98 billion.
OpinionWire Articles - published 01/02/2007 - Roy Illsley
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It was reported last week that various problems with the Indian outsourcing industry are forcing UK and European companies to look elsewhere for their offshore provision. The problems that have been cited include big wage rises, skills shortages, and incidents around data security.
OpinionWire Articles - published 07/12/2006 - Maxine Holt
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Indias biggest IT services vendor, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), announced last week that it had taken control of Swiss banking software and services specialist TKS-Teknosoft (TKS), having bought a 75% stake for CHF 100.5m (about EUR160 million). The two companies had partnered for some years, with TKS providing industry-specific and local market expertise in France and Switzerland, as well as being the front-end for its customers to gain the benefit of lower-cost software development from TCS, who c
OpinionWire Articles - published 09/11/2006 - Alan Rodger
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I was having a look at Internet growth and usage for African countries, and came up with some interesting statistics. Reunion, The Seychelles, and Morocco all have greater than 15% of their population with access to the Internet. As individual countries go, this is higher than Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/11/2006 - Terry White
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System integration is rightly perceived by many to be the solution to a wide range of IT problems that organisations face today, but in many cases it proves to be too difficult a challenge, often failing to deliver its full value. Sometimes this is because integration simply takes too long to achieve, or it is too expensive, and too complex; other times it just does not deliver integration at the right level. Therefore, many organisations opt for what they believe is the easy alternative: swivel chair i
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/11/2006 - Sarah Burnett
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