Cheshire Police Authority has signed a framework agreement with Capgemini for IT services to support back-office policing activities. The framework will include technology to enable shared services. It is expected to generate savings of £40 million for Cheshire Constabulary over ten years.

It will cover payroll systems, duty management, finance, procurement, performance management, logistics, asset management and fleet management systems.

Source: Computerweekly

The International Data Centre Group, the first global data centre alliance, announces today that the leading carrier neutral data centre in Romania, NXDATA, has joined its alliance network.

The NXDATA facility is operated on two sites and is strategically located in northern Bucharest’s high-tech Pipera business park, which is a key hub for the Romanian IT industry. As an ISO 9001 certified data centre operator, NXDATA is compatible with IDC-G’s standards and corporate ethos in emphasising high quality data centre services delivered to first-rate customer service standards.

BT has launched a data centre service aimed at enterprises that want to take advantage of a cloud model for application hosting and delivery, but need to maintain security and have direct access to their information.

Following a successful pilot project, U.K.-based managed cloud services company iomart Group will migrate over 300,000 customer e-mail accounts to the Open-Xchange e-mail and collaboration platform, providing end users with a more feature-rich service.

In addition, iomart’s customers will be able to upgrade to advanced groupware features and mobility support in Open-Xchange – providing the company with additional value-added services.

Source: iomart
 

The way in which the BBC outsourced and then “reinsourced” its ongoing project to digitise its archive was poorly managed, a review by the National Audit Office. Although the Digital Media Initiative is now delivering results, the NAO found that inadequate supplier management and project governance had severely impact the project’s value for money.

In 2004, the BBC appointed its primary IT services supplier Siemens to undertake the Digital Media Initiative without allowing any other suppliers to bid for the contract, the NAO report found.

Source: Information Age

Fana Sparebank has entered into a renewed and expanded contract with EDB ErgoGroup for the supply of IT services. The agreement runs for five years, and represents total contract value in excess of NOK 100 million.

The agreement includes IT solutions and operating services for the bank's new electronic services. In addition, a number of new services are elements of the agreement.

Source: 4-traders

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Telecoms provider BT reported a 7% increase in third-quarter core profit as it continued to cut costs, and said its recovering Global Services unit would generate free cash flow this year. Britain's biggest fixed-line services supplier said on Thursday it had gained market share in retail broadband, winning 53% of new customers in the quarter to end-December. It said the results gave it confidence in its outlook.

Total revenue fell 3% to £5.04 billion, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £1.48 billion was ahead of market forecasts.

Cloud hosting provider GoGrid has announced it plans to expand to Europe with the opening of a new data centre in the summer of 2011. The announcement comes on the heels of the recent expansion of GoGrid's hybrid cloud capabilities at its two data centres.

The move reflects the company's global expansion strategy to accommodate growing demand for cloud computing outside of the US GoGrid's regional presence. The cloud hosting provider did not disclose any details about the location or specifications of the data centre.

Source: The WHIR

Data centre leaders from the CEE region and international executives will converge on Budapest in two weeks’ time for the first summit for data centres across Central and Eastern Europe. The event will take place 17-18 February 2011.

The event, researched and produced by consulting firm BroadGroup, will discover valuable insight and know how that can be applied to data centre businesses directly after the event. It will also offer unique networking opportunities between peers from across the region and internationally.

Source: Balkans Business News

Internet Villages International has refuted claims made in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard that Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has "pulled out" of their proposed plans to develop a data farm on their Ecclefechan site.

A spokesperson for IVI confirmed that LBG have not revoked their contract with IVI and certainly have no plans to do so in the future. A delay in submitting planning proposals for the Johnstonebank Farm site has been caused by LBG undertaking a strategic review of its data centre requirements.

Source: Journalism

The UK's BT Global Services will soon raise the number of staff at its customer service centres in Budapest and Debrecen to about 600, said the head of customer service at BT Global Service Rogier Bronsgeest.

An expanding customer base determined the company to hire more staff, he added. Bronsgeest declined to give a firm date for the new hires. The service centre, established in 2007, serves BT clients in Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Source: Telecom Paper

Shepway District Council has issued a tender for the procurement of information and communications technology, or ICT, support services. The scope of the deal includes: servers, databases, desktops, laptops, printers, end user devices, smart phones, wide area and local networking, telephony, data centre management, disaster recovery, security, e-mail, archive backup and recovery, storage area networks, application support of a typical portfolio of local government applications, MS Windows and MS Office support, projects and programmes, help desk, and ITIL service management.

The Bunker Secure Hosting has announced the successful completion of a power upgrade project at its data centre in Ash, Kent. The high voltage and low voltage infrastructure has been replaced with brand new state of the art equipment delivering double the amount of power, improved resilience and automation, and ample capacity for future growth.

The Higher Education Funding Council of England has allocated £12.5 million to a new cloud computing shared services initiative for universities and colleges. Last week, HEFCE announcemed the details of its cuts to university funding. In what HEFCE chief executive Sir Alan Langlands described as a “challenging financial settlement”, £940 million will cut from teaching, research and buildings budgets in the coming financial year.

Salary: Up to £60,000 package

I am working with the Project Management division of one of the largest and most respected construction consultancies in the UK. Due to an increase in Data Centre projects, we are looking for a Senior Delivery Project Manager to join the team.

Source: Career Structure
 

Infracom, an Italian service provider offering a wide range of telecom and data services to large enterprises and service providers, has chosen Infinera for an upgrade to its backbone network.

Mobile network O2 has released figures today for carbon efficiency across its business. According to figures released by the company, in the last two years it has cut carbon emissions by nearly 30,000 tonnes CO2. Their figures are released in tandem with the news that they have been recertified with the Carbon Trust Standard. They were the first mobile network operator to be awarded the Carbon Trust Standard in 2009.

TelecityGroup has announced its results for the year ended 31 December 2010.

Highlights include: Revenue up 15.9% to £196.4 million (2009: £169.4million), with constant currency revenue growth of 17.7% and adjusted profit before tax up 45.0% to £51.4 million (2009: £35.4 million). In addition, Total announced customer power up to 107MW and £200 million five-year senior debt facility arranged in the year

Source: TelecityGroup
 

Telefónica International Wholesale Services has selected Interoute as its core fibre optic network provider for Western Europe, responsible for deploying a next-generation optical DWDM network. As part of this strategic partnership TIWS will also become Interoute's provider for trans-Atlantic, USA and Latin America routes.

Interoute will provide TIWS with a 100 GB capacity network connecting the major cities of Europe, to support its future expansion plans. This long-term partnership agreement reinforces the business relationship the companies have been developing for years.

Portugal Telecom has chosen Covilha as the headquarters of its biggest data centre in Portugal. The 45,000 sq m centre will support storage and cloud services for business and consumer customers.

Powered by an adjacent wind farm, the data centre will offer capacity for around 50,000 servers. It is expected to enter service in the second half of 2012, doubling the capacity of data centres in Portugal.

Source: Telecom Paper

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it has been awarded a US$46 million IT outsourcing contract to improve security and reliability while reducing costs for Interconnector (UK) Limited, the operator of the strategic gas pipeline between continental Europe and the UK.

The ten-year deal involves the full range of HP products and services, including a dual data-centre solution across international boundaries and converged infrastructure technologies designed to offer the high levels of security, availability and reliability.

Source: Sourcing Focus

In this Interview, Bet365.com chief technology officer Martin Davies discusses their data centre strategy and general IT set-up.

Source: Computing

Here for full article
 

ControlCircle, a hosting and connectivity provider, announced that it has won a contract to deliver data centre services to Luup, a provider of banking-grade mobile payments solutions that enable organisations to securely transform the way financial services are delivered.

The agreement will see ControlCircle provide the comprehensive virtual infrastructure required to host and manage Luup's mobile payments solutions and expanding services to customers. ControlCircle offers the global scalability needed to support Luup's continued strong growth across multiple regions.

CSC has been awarded a new five-year IT outsourcing agreement by SELEX Galileo, a Finmeccanica company. The approximate value of the agreement is US$200 million.

Under the five-year agreement, CSC will manage IT services for SELEX Galileo, including mid-range computers, servers and desktops, local and wide area networks, internet and intranet services, service desk, applications development and support, and IT procurement services.SELEX Galileo UK and Italy ICT businesses vice president Tony Ham said that the new agreement builds on their existing business relationship with CSC.

The client is a Building Services Consultant who has been established for over 60 years with over 5 offices worldwide. They are looking for a specialist in Data centres design work. The right person will currently be in an associate or in a senior role, either looking after a team of engineers who are working on data centre projects or you will be an electrical engineer involved in pure design work with elements of project Management.

Computacenter has made its first acquisition of the year in France, snapping up reseller Top Info SAS and its subsidiaries. The deal, for the Paris-based firm, was for €21million, with up to €1 million extra payable, subject to the financial performance of Top Info in the period to 31 December 2011.

Top Info operates from four locations in France and employs some 240 people. It specialises in IT infrastructure products and supporting services to large corporations and the public sector in France.

Source: CRN

North Tyneside Council has approved planning consent for a second state of the art green facility at the Cobalt Data Centre Campus near Newcastle. Developed by Highbridge properties and designed by award winning architects Woods Bagot, the 3,360 sq m speculative DC2 building will include four autonomous modular data halls comprising two 960 sq m halls and two 720 sq m halls.

The Dutch government plans to reduce the number of data centres it uses from 64 to four or five.

It will also scale back to one ICT work station manager for the core departments in The Hague, and the back offices of implementation and oversight organisations may be merged. The plans were outlined in the note 'Compacte Rijksdienst', presented by interior affairs minister Piet Hein Donner to parliament. The aim is a more efficient government and cost savings. It's unclear over what period the plans will be implemented.

Source: Telecom Paper

Daisy is back on the acquisition trail after cutting a deal with Barclays for an additional £40 million to help fund further acquisitions. The move was hailed by industry analysts as a vote of confidence in Daisy’s strategy and in the strength of the b2b unified communications market.

Jones Lang LaSalle has advised on the completion of an industrial investment transactions involving the acquisition of Units A&C , Prologis Park, Croydon.

Acting on behalf of IM Properties, Jones Lang LaSalle has acquired the units for £20.68 million from Prupim at a net initial yield of 6.44%. The property comprises two high specification warehouses totalling 176,650 sq ft – one let to UPS until June 2017 and the other to Morgan Stanley, who operate it as a data centre, until September 2030.

Source: Property Magazine International
 

Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer, has announced sweeping hardware upgrades to all Virtual Private Servers hosted in its London data centre, without adding any additional costs to customers.

Location: London
Salary: £40,000 to £45,000

The role will be based at one of their large data centres in West London and will be responsible for managing the infrastructure within the data centre. The role will be working very closely with the technical manager to ensure optimum performance and longevity by implementing and supervising the planned preventative maintenance programme and through regular testing.

Source: Career Structure

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Chennai-based Accel Frontline, an end-to-end IT services provider, has entered into a pact with Swedish firm Inswedco AB to offer on-site and off-shore technology professional services to the Scandinavian market.

The partnership extends to Enterprises Resource Planning, legacy applications and systems software support. This is expected to open up the Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Danish markets for Accel, while Inswedco could leverage the IT competencies of the Indian firm to serve their market.

Source: Sify Finance

BT, the global communications and IT services company, has announced a major broadband investment that will cement Northern Ireland's position at the forefront of the fibre broadband revolution in Europe by March 2012. The investment is part of BT Group's £2.5 billion fibre roll-out in the UK.

The company are looking for a Senior Electrical Design Engineer to work in Croydon, preferably with data centre experience but more important is that you are able to carry out surveys independently and become immersed in the work load immediately. So long as you have worked on a variety of projects they will certainly consider your CV. You must be fully conversant with relevant Electrical Building Services software.

Source: Career Structure
 

Conseal Security, the provider of solutions to secure data on the move, has announced that it has selected iomart Hosting to provide the online delivery platform for its cloud-based security remote management console and remote device authentication solutions.

Under the agreement, iomart will provide web and server hosting solutions for all aspects of Conseal’s business, including hosting the company’s public web site, ecommerce facilities, customer secure site, email, remote management console, end user software downloads and audit trail service.

Source: Web Wire

Interxion, a European provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, has completed the second of three phased expansions to its ZUR1 data centre in Zurich-Glattbrugg, in response to consistent growth in customer demand. 640m2 of new data centre space was created in the expansion, which increases total data centre space to over 4000m2.

Telecoms firm Colt is on the verge of buying trading technology outfit MarketPrizm from Chi-x Global, according to the Financial Times. Part of Chi-Tech, MarketPrizm offers market participants connectivity, co-location and hosting, low latency market data, and third-party applications.

AIM-listed provider of cloud technology based telecommunications solutions Pinnacle Telecom Group has been awarded a contract to supply network connectivity for BBC to provide the outside broadcast coverage of the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29th, 2011.

Pinnacle Telecom will provide network and circuits opposite Buckingham Palace at Canada Gate, where the Royal Wedding media compound will be built, the Mall and Horse Guards Road, along Whitehall and Downing Street and opposite Westminster Abbey.

Source: UK City Media

Goldman Sachs has invested $70 million (£43 million) in British “user virtualisation” software and services vendor AppSense. The Cheshire-based company sells technology that allows customers to create and manage user profiles, based on the virtualised applications, desktops and servers they need to access.

Our client is looking for an experienced Project Manager to join their team on a permanent full time role. The role will involve the project management of various projects in the data centre industry to include construction, upgrade works and new builds. The role requires someone that has experience of working on data centre projects previously.

Source: Career Structure
 

Acer, the world's No. 2 PC vendor, has helped the Ferrari Formula One team upgrade its data Center with the use of high-speed computing infrastructure and solutions, the company said.

Through its European unit Gateway, Acer has made available to Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro hundreds of multi-node GW2000ht servers that integrated High Performance Computing (HPC) technology with storage and connected systems, enabling the Formula On

Source: Focus Taiwan

A major utility provider in the United Kingdom, Severn Trent Water, has announced its intentions to rein in its energy use by cutting back in data centre space, according to the firm's chief information officer Myron Hrycyk.

Interxion a leading European provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, has launched an enhanced version of its Secure Data Service (SDS) managed cloud backup service which provides a raft of new benefits for organisations of all sizes looking for a high-speed, agentless, pay-as-you-go backup solution for their mission-critical applications.

Colt Group has issued results for the 12 months ended 31 December 2010. Highlights included

* Solid EBITDA performance on improved revenue mix
* Significant growth in portfolio of cloud based services
* Strong new partnerships with technology leaders
* Launched ground-breaking, state-of-the-art modular data centre
* Restructuring on course to deliver €20m of net annualised savings

Nottingham-based data centre design and build company 2bm has clinched £4m worth of new business in the last six weeks. New contracts were secured with three clients in the public and private sector. Details of the contracts are still under wraps due to commercial sensitivity, said 2bm. The deals concern the design and build of the clients’ new data centres.

2bm, set up eight years ago by Mark King and Jason Preston, has expanded its turnover from £4.5 million in 2008/09 to £7.2 million in 2009/10 and is set to achieve turnover exceeding £10 million in this financial year.

KPN's Getronics wants to lower energy use at its Data Centre in Haarlem by building a green cooling system. The system will be environmentally friendly and energy saving by using heat wheels. The wheels will use the ambient temperature to save energy by an estimated 40% per year.

The new cooling system will be in use in the first quarter of next year. The data centre is part of Getronics' green strategy for all its data centres. Getronics aims to improve energy efficiency by 30% by 2020, as compared to 2005.

Source: Telecom Paper

AboveNet, a provider of high bandwidth connectivity solutions, announced it has completed its expansion in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. It now offers a comprehensive portfolio of metro and WAN services to enterprises and carriers across Europe.

Thieves broke into a Vodafone data centre in Basingstoke on Sunday night, stealing network equipment and bringing about an outage for many of the company’s customers across the UK. Customers have lost voice, text and internet access on their mobile phones, according to the company. Vodafone has not confirmed how many people are affected by the outage.