Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 15:20:00

Interim report intended to provide the blueprint for a digital economy

Lord Carter, the communications minister, today unwrapped an interim Digital Britain report (PDF), which is to become the blueprint for taking the UK to the next stage of the information age.

The report presents a 22-point action plan outlining the government's plans for the UK's digital transformation, which will include the upgrading and modernising of all wired, wireless and broadband infrastructure.

Prime minister Gordon Brown told the New Local Government Network conference in London that the report would set out the path for the future of the whole British economy.

"Our digital networks will be the backbone of our economy in the decades ahead. We know that every aspect of our lives - every school, every hospital, every workplace and even every home - will depend on the services the digital network provides," he said.

The report committed to making broadband available to every house in Britain by 2012. But it was less prescriptive about how next-generation superfast broadband networks would be deployed.

The Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (Berr) will establish a government-led strategy group to assess the "necessary demand-side, supply-side and regulatory measures" to underpin current investment plans, which will see suppliers foot the bill for building the next-generation networks.

Rob Bamforth, principal analyst for communication, collaboration and convergence at Quocirca, said that it would be better for the government to show some "wired-up thinking".

"Local government, healthcare, education and 'blue lamp' emergency service organisations could give an idea of demand for services outside those needed by the consumer," he said.

Becta chief executive Stephen Crowne agreed that broadband must play a central role in education and training.

"We firmly believe that reliable, widespread broadband access is an essential tool that will help equip learners with the training and skills required for a truly 'next generation' workforce," he said.

Berr will be seeking feedback on the report. The deadline for comment is 12 March 2009, and the full report is expected to be published in April.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 14:10:00

System expected to support improvement in quality of business data

Supermarket chain Morrisons is to implement a voice-based system to improve the efficiency of stock picking at its warehouses.

The new platform will replace a paper-based system, and is intended to enhance the quality of business data and reporting capabilities for its warehouse management systems which include a new Oracle platform.

Under the system, operators receive computer-generated voice instructions and can track and trace products from the picking point to the delivery destination.

The system and belt-mounted computers to be used by pickers will be provided by Zetes. The roll-out will be conducted in phases starting this month and is set to complete by 2010.

Morrisons awarded the contract, which is said to be worth over £1m, following a successful three-month pilot. The trial is claimed to have provided benefits such as improved picking accuracy, operational efficiency in areas such as task allocation and the ability to support multilingual pickers.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 13:25:00

Cost cutting programme announced as profits slide

Infrastructure software firm Citrix has started a restructuring programme to consolidate its facilities and eliminate 10 per cent of its global headcount.

Citrix anticipates that the workforce reduction will result in yearly pre-tax savings of around $50m (£34.9m). It expects to incur a pre-tax charge of $19m to $23m (£13.2m to £16m) as a result of the redundancies.

The cull was announced as the company disclosed its fourth-quarter results. Profits slid to $60m (£41.9m) from $63m (£44m) in the previous year, with revenues totalling $415.7m (£290m), an increase from $399.6m (£279.1m) reported for the same period in 2007.

In the meantime, Citrix rival VMware has not yet announced any intentions of a staff reduction, and has over 190 vacancies listed on its website with several openings in its desktop virtualisation division.

Privacy activists are crying foul over the "Suggested Sites" feature in IE8, but Microsoft insists concerns about the feature, such that it might be used to serve up targeted advertising or that it poses a security risk, are misplaced.…

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 11:52:00

Online retailer outsources hosting to focus in-house resource on content

Toys R Us has relaunched its web site with added features intended to take advantage of the increasing popularity of web shopping.

New features include interactive content such as rotating images and regular products additions, as well as improved security for online payments.

The new set-up also involved handing over hosting, security and back-up of the site to TelecityGroup so that the online retailer can focus on other areas.

"We made the decision to outsource the hosting and security of the site to a specialist to guarantee we could deliver consistent quality of service while focusing on the site's content," said Mike Coogan, marketing and e-commerce director at Toys R Us.

"Our focus is to maintain a good customer experience on the web site; it can make the difference between a sale and someone looking elsewhere."

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 11:49:00

Electronics firm to report first quarterly loss in seven years

Toshiba is reported to be expecting its first operating loss in seven years due to a downward sales trend across the chip manufacturing sector.

Factors influencing the negative conditions in the processor industry include oversupply and slowing demand for chips used in devices such as portable music players and digital cameras.

In its previous results for the fourth quarter of 2008, Toshiba had already reported a loss of $1.76 bn (£1.24bn), against a profit of $467m (£331m) in the prior year.

Elsewhere in the chipmaking sector, the European Union anti-trust case between AMD and Intel continues, with the latter attempting to delay proceedings in order to buy more time to respond.

AMD's claim is that Intel has illegally offered discounts to vendors that agreed to favour Intel chips or stop offering systems that contained AMD chips for the past decade.

Both sides have been locked in anti-trust battles in courts worldwide over Intel's alleged anti-competitive practices since 2005.

Tom Young, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 11:51:00

IT services must also be available to other UK agencies

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has issued a contract tender for up to £800m worth of IT services over 10 years.

The organisation is looking for a supplier to offer application development and maintenance, communications, application hosting, network services, running a datacentre, security management and end-user services.

The services are required in the UK, but may be international in the future, and must be structured in such a way that they can also be used by other government agencies, including the UK border agency, the Identity and Passport Service and the Criminal Records Bureau.

Soca will accept consortium bids, but companies will be expected to form a " single legal entity" should they win the contract.

All tenders must be submitted by 17 March 2009.

Tom Young, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 17:47:00

Users claim password appears in URL

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is facing fresh criticism over its security policies after users complained that its tax self-assessment web site reveals their password in the URL address bar.

Anyone filling in the online tax forms would be at risk of allowing others to access their personal details because the username field has an auto-complete function.

"Click on a link to open the 'about you' page, for example, and there is my password clearly displayed in the browser address bar for all to see. Print off any page and the password is printed as part of the URL," said Geoff Westcott of West Sussex, who contacted Computing about the problem.

"Bearing in mind that the username on the log-in page is an auto-completed field in many browsers, a phisher now has all the information they need to log in and access any and all of my personal information."

Richard Clayton, a security expert at Cambridge University, and adviser to the House of Lords committee on personal internet security, said that such a fault was "foolish" and "not regular practice".

"Seeing someone's tax return is not the same as accessing their identity, however. Though it could be a step towards doing that," he said.

Westcott said that he reported the fault to HMRC twice and received no response. "I think this indicates the level of concern HMRC truly places on securing personal data," he said.

HMRC said that the URL does not contain the customer's password but shows a unique taxpayer record (UTR) number.

"To log in to our secure services a user ID and password is required; the UTR is not based on either of these," said HMRC in a statement.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 11:49:00

Chipmaker to report first quarterly loss in seven years

Toshiba is reported to be expecting its first operating loss in seven years due to a downward sales trend across the chip manufacturing sector.

Factors influencing the negative conditions in the processor industry include oversupply and slowing demand for chips used in devices such as portable music players and digital cameras.

In its previous results for the fourth quarter of 2008, Toshiba had already reported a loss of $1.76 bn (£1.24bn), against profit of $467m (£331m) in the prior year.

Elsewhere in the chipmaking sector, the European Union anti-trust case between AMD and Intel continues, with the latter attempting to delay proceedings in order to buy more time to respond.

AMD’s claim is that Intel has illegally offered discounts to vendors that agreed to favour Intel chips or stop offering systems that contained AMD chips for the past decade.

Both sides have been locked in anti-trust battles in courts worldwide over Intel's alleged anti-competitive practices since 2005.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 11:52:00

Online retailer outsourced hosting to focus in-house resource on content

Toys R Us has relaunched its web site with added features intended to take advantage of the increasing popularity of web shopping.

New features include interactive content such as rotating images and regular products additions, as well as improved security for online payments.

The new set-up also involved handing over hosting, security and back-up of the site to TelecityGroup so that the online retailer could focus on other areas.

“We made the decision to outsource the hosting and security of the site to a specialist, to guarantee we could deliver consistent quality of service while focusing on the site’s content,” said Mike Coogan, marketing and e-commerce director at Toys R Us.

“Our focus is to maintain a good customer experience on the web site; it can make the difference between a sale and someone looking elsewhere.”

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 05:30:00

The frozen food firm has streamlined its operations through a major application infrastructure overhaul

Frozen food producer Birds Eye Iglo Group (BEIG) has completed the deployment of a new core IT platform following its split from consumer goods group Unilever in 2006.

The implementation of a Europe-wide SAP system covering most of BEIG’s operations – ­ from manufacturing and packaging to order processing – ­ was critical to the business following its acquisition by a private equity firm. Previously, the company relied on its former parent’s infrastructure.

BEIG’s private equity owners knew the rollout was vital to support the firm’s operations, but did not have direct involvement with many aspects of the project, said chief information and HR officer Tania Howarth.

“As with any board, they were interested in what was going on and were aware that [the SAP implementation] represented a potential risk and opportunity for the future of the company,” said Howarth. “So it was important to get it right, in a way that would take the business forward in a positive way.”

The group outsourced its software support function to Fujitsu, helping to reduce the overhead of building new systems from scratch.

Consultancy Capgemini was also awarded a contract to manage the firm’s telephony and hardware infrastructure, but as Computing revealed in April 2008, “project issues” convinced BEIG to switch to Indian supplier Satyam a month later.

Eleven SAP modules supporting more than 700 users were rolled out, which involved transferring data from legacy systems and migrating non-SAP applications for areas such as external services, factory systems and desktop applications to the new environment.

The most testing aspect of the project, which was completed in stages from May 2008, was ensuring that suppliers could meet key milestones within a 12-month deadline. “The biggest challenge during that time was getting people to deliver and our suppliers to work well together. In such a crucial project, the last thing you need is distraction,” said Howarth.

Howarth’s brief was to build a standardised, flexible IT setup, but packaged software has not always been the company’s preferred choice. For areas such as warehouse management, BEIG had initially considered implementing SAP but later decided to develop a bespoke system to cater to its specific logistics execution processes.

Now that the major aspects of the transformation are complete, the firm plans to explore the use of business intelligence tools for planning and reporting. Those systems are at the design stage and will be partly developed in-house.

Improvements in supply chain management systems have already reduced turnaround time by up to 30 per cent and that area of the business will see further systems development during 2009, also carried out internally because of operational complexities.

Despite the clouds of uncertainty looming over Satyam, which is currently at the centre of a major fraud investigation, Howarth anticipates continuing to work with the supplier on projects in the future.

“Their performance continues to be excellent and their customer service exemplary, so it is certainly business as usual,” she said.

Howard believes that completing the infrastructure project ahead of the global downturn will stand the business in good stead.

“Keeping an eye on spending and ensuring good return on investment is normal and is the main part of the job anyway, so it is no different than it used to be before the downturn,” said Howarth.

“Besides, the initial brief was to have a fit-for-purpose and rationalised setup, so we are already in very good shape to weather the recession,” she said.

“And we have a massive luxury in IT terms, which is not having any legacy systems that need to be maintained at a prohibitive cost and the chance to focus on ways of improving what we already have.”

Maintaining staff morale



As in most businesses, keeping staff motivated during a recession is a tough task. But the challenge is even more pressing at Birds Eye, where IT staff are seeking new challenges now that they have come to the end of what was the company’s most important project to date.

“Our people became quite emotionally attached to the project,” said chief information and HR officer Tania Howarth. “Now that the major piece of work has been completed, they will need more attention.”

Howarth is determined to keep her team motivated. “The post-implementation stage is probably the hardest, as you have to get the benefits from the systems and processes that have been implemented, so we still need a lot of energy from our teams to achieve that,” she said.

Computing staff, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 06:30:00

IT leaders are being cautious but not downbeat

And here is the good news… Apple and IBM are doing very well, thank you. Record financial results all round.

That’s that bit over. Now for the bad news.

Five thousand layoffs at Microsoft and another 5,000 at Ericsson. IT job cuts at Axa and Unisys. Let’s stop there before it gets worse.

Are you getting as fed up as we are by the constant stream of depressing stories emanating from the business world, and in particular the IT sector?

Computing is the first to admit that we are not slow in reporting such bad news, but sadly it is a fact of life at the moment. We’ll be the first to bring you the good news too, it’s just a little harder to find right now.

Nonetheless, it is heartening to see that IT managers are approaching the difficult times ahead with a mood of realism rather than being disheartened.

The first of what will be a regular quarterly survey of readers’ attitudes, the Computing Technology Barometer, shows that IT leaders are being cautious but not downbeat.

They expect little by way of budget increases, and are wary of the latest products and services being pushed at them by vendors, but where there are opportunities to deliver real benefits from the right technologies, they are forging ahead.

It is important to remember that driving change through IT does not necessarily mean buying lots of new products. There are often plenty of ways to make better, faster or smarter use of what you already have –­ and when you see well-established trends such as virtualisation, mobile computing and data security highlighted as priorities in our research, the implication is clear –­ IT leaders have become very good at making the most of a tough time.

So to borrow a phrase that someone else borrowed in a rather more important speech last week, let’s pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep IT at the heart of successful business.

Rosalie Marshall, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 01:00:00

Moving away from the familiarity of Windows has provided several moments of uncertainty

As I am a technology journalist I perhaps should not admit this, but until recently,

I had been using the same beaten-up old laptop since my university years. It was perfectly capable of running the few simple applications I needed it to.

I did, however, realise that I looked something of an oddball as I sat in conference rooms full of reporters and delegates tapping away on the latest flashy devices.

Among that throng of laptop-wielding business users and journalists I had spotted a discernable shift in hardware use ­ – more of them were turning up to industry events with MacBooks.

To me, Apple’s sleek line of gadgets exudes a sense of the trendy and cool ­ – but are they serious business machines?

I have always had a few doubts about buying a Mac. They seemed overpriced; some software applications are not Mac compatible; and from my limited use of Macs, I know that they take a bit of getting used to after a PC.

But I have overcome these quibbles, thanks to a recent visit to a duty free shop ­ – when suddenly price became less of an issue.

The compatibility problem has been more or less put to bed too, with utilities such as Parallels desktop for Mac and VMware’s Fusion for Mac, which allow Windows applications to be used on the Mac desktop.

My first reactions to using my Mac should resonate well with those who have also made a relatively abrupt switch from using a PC – ­ it is fair to say that my learning curve was rather steep.

The lack of a Start button, an inability to right-click using the trackpad, even maximising windows all threw me at first.

I was similarly flummoxed when it came to programs freezing. The trusty Ctrl-Alt-Del short cut has no effect. Instead, I had to learn about the marvels of the Force Quit function.

None of these quirks is a fundamental flaw and I have quickly grown accustomed to the new user interface.

But I was also lucky enough to have a bit of holiday time to get used to the system. I certainly would not advise any large group of business users to make the switch without undertaking proper familiarisation training first.

More comment at http://newsdesk.computing.co.uk

The central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan was effectively knocked offline for more than a week by a Russian cybermilitia that continues to flood the country's internet providers with crippling data attacks, a security expert said.…

A mild warning from anti-virus labs Kaspersky has been inflated into a full-blown panic by the Australian press that is warning of an imminent meltdown once infection reaches Australian shores.…

Dave Bailey, Computing, Wednesday 28 January 2009 at 17:32:00

High expectation of public sector investment in broadband when Lord Carter releases long-awaited report on Thursday

Expectations are running high after the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), announced the launch of Lord Carter's Digital Britain report tomorrow, Thursday 29 January.

Lord Carter will brief media at the BERR conference centre in Victoria, London, timed to coincide with culture secretary Andy Burnham’s presentation to MPs in Parliament.

The eagerly awaited report is expected to set out the changes required to give UK citizens universal broadband access, and also a much faster version than that currently obtainable using the UK's copper network infrastructure. This would require broadband access using optical fibre either to the local street cabinet or directly into residential buildings.

Minister for communications, technology and broadcasting Lord Carter is already on record as calling for a Europe-wide initiative to give citizens universal access to broadband, urging Europe to "metaphorically, and also perhaps literally, consider digging or at least opening up the trenches for universal access for broadband".

Recently the government has intimated that perhaps it might be prepared to put much more public money behind next-generation access using fibre connections, contrary to the findings of the earlier Caio report, which laid the emphasis for investment on the private sector.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Wednesday 28 January 2009 at 12:39:00

ECTA "regulatory effectiveness" scorecard gives UK watchdog top spot

Ofcom has been lauded as the best telecoms regulator in Europe. The UK's national regulatory authority (NRA) has topped the latest Regulatory Scorecard published by the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA).

The annual benchmark checks the telecoms regulatory framework in the 18 EU member countries, together with Norway and Turkey, giving an overall score for the effectiveness of the regulatory environment in each country.

The scorecard asks 104 questions on areas such as the time to port a telephone number, price for competitors to access the local loop, and the price of a basket of mobile services for infrequent users.

The questions were in five sections: overall institutional environment; key enablers for market entry and network rollout; NRA regulatory processes; application of regulation by the NRA; and regulatory and market outcomes.

Second in the scorecard was the Netherlands, followed by non-EU member Norway. Poland was the lowest-ranked EU country.

Rob Bamforth, a principal analyst at Quocirca, said that, while it was good to measure how well competitiveness is being encouraged, it is "important from a national, economic and social perspective that this is levelling up and not levelling down". The goal should be "highest common factor, not the lowest".

One current area of interest for UK businesses and consumers is the continuing uncertainty about a national fibre rollout, although a much clearer view will be provided when communications minister Lord Stephen Carter's Digital Britain report finally sees the light of day. Touted for delivery on 26 January, the report has still not appeared, and some rumours suggest that it may not appear until next week.

Emphasising the fibre-to-the-home issue, ECTA chairman Innocenzo Genna said that the most important contribution for national NRAs would be to "focus on the goal of at least one fibre 'superhighway' to each home that is effectively regulated with terms that allow a fair return but do not discriminate in incumbents' favour".

However, ECTA pointed out that a "particular concern is that different approaches are being taken in different countries on the regulation of 'next generation' fibre access networks".

ECTA quoted the explicit restrictions on access in Spain, and compared them to "measures to 'unbundle' fibre to allow more choice for consumers in the Netherlands".

Bamforth said that Ofcom and the UK government must set the right tone on next-generation access, with suitable encouragement for BT to continue to invest in core infrastructure for the long term, and encouragement of a competitive market for services over that infrastructure.

"It means recognising the difference between investment in infrastructure and services, and allowing both to gain commensurate, but not excessive, rewards," he said.