Local Expertise to be Enhanced with Recruitment of 400 Analytics Specialists

IBM announced the launch of its London-based IBM London Analytics Solution Centre, the latest addition to its global network of analytics centres.

As part of a global multi-million pound investment initiative, this newly-created centre will help IBM apply its advanced analytics expertise to the complex business challenges facing its UK-based clients.

Leveraging its London location and IBM’s deep industry expertise, the centre’s initial mission will be to focus on the UK financial services sector. It will help IBM’s financial sector clients to develop systems that provide improved visibility and tracking of risk positions across markets and asset classes, as well as to drive information management to support improved client satisfaction and cost efficiencies.

Over time, the centre will expand to help clients across other areas of business. These include: energy and utilities companies, as they seek to roll out smart grids and intelligent metering; public sector organisations, as they develop smart city and transportation initiatives that reduce congestion and improve public safety; and, pharmaceuticals firms as they introduce smarter ways to improve the speed and quality of drug development.

The centre will be the focal point for a UK & Ireland analytics team which will initially number a total of 400 consultants, software specialists and mathematicians. It is anticipated that the team will double in size as demand for business analytics and optimisation services increases.

“Today’s business leaders need to move beyond intuition to insight, from gut feel to facts – it is now possible to see key patterns in vast amounts of data, to extract critical insights and move to a new level of intelligence,” said Brendon Riley, Chief Executive, IBM UK and Ireland. “London was chosen due to its status as a global financial centre and world-class skills base. Business analytics offers an opportunity for us to help clients transform the way they operate – enabling them to become smarter and improving levels of competitiveness.”

The centre will be based at IBM’s Southbank office. It will draw on a wealth of IBM expertise from IBM’s Business Analytics and Optimisation global consulting organisation as well as from technologists at Europe’s largest software development laboratory – IBM Hursley in Hampshire, UK.

“We live in a knowledge economy – services which help companies to understand and interpret complex systems, such as financial markets, are becoming increasingly important,” said Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills at the launch event. “This new initiative from IBM is an important vote of confidence in the continued strength of London’s banking and financial sector, and will help to give British firms the competitive advantage they need to thrive and grow.”

The London centre will have access to IBM’s comprehensive Information Management portfolio that includes technologies integrated following the acquisitions of Cognos, iLog and SPSS. It will also provide expertise to help organisations embed new sensor technology into their processes to gather detailed performance and management data on which to base analysis and decision-making.

Mitesh Patel, managing director of IT managed services provider Fifosys said, “The tremendous growth in our business is derived from helping to save our clients significant sums of money on their IT spend, while consistently adding value and delivering peace of mind from reliable infrastructure and systems.”

Previous winners of the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 include Google, TomTom and eBay.

With this award, judged over five years of performance, IT managed services provider Fifosys has shown that they are Europe’s fastest growing managed services company.

“Making the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 is commendable in today’s highly competitive technology industry,” said David Halstead, partner in charge of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 EMEA program. “We congratulate Fifosys on being one of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in the region.”

Patel adds, “Mid-market and SME organisations need good quality IT support and director-level advice and guidance if they are to grow and thrive in today’s highly competitive and fast moving business world. Fifosys has found a niche within this part of the market for its range of premium-quality services and this will continue to be the reason for our success in 2010 and beyond.”

“By taking a step back, assessing and understanding the current levels of risk associated with existing IT deployments, it is possible for an organisation to truly determine its ongoing IT requirements and put in place the technology, skills and resources to reduce operational risk and transform IT from a cost centre to business enabler,” concludes Patel.

Based in London, Fifosys is a vendor-independent, IT infrastructure provider, software developer and outsourced IT managed services provider.

Fifosys specialises in providing the level and detail of support that large scale enterprises expect but delivered for the SME and mid-market business. Using an ITIL and Prince 2-based best practice approach to IT support, London-based Fifosys (http://www.fifosys.com/) has built a reputation as a trusted partner with its customers, providing both first-class IT support services and the highest levels of advice, guidance and reporting.

Established in 2001, Fifosys is a professional technology infrastructure specialist, which delivers a broad portfolio of high quality technical and strategic IT management services. Fifosys provides its own skilled staff to selectively outsource the IT services which most SMEs struggle to provide themselves. Fifosys acts as a single point of contact and accountability for all IT matters from service desk support to problem resolution, procurement management to IT director-level reporting and advice as well as the management of all third party suppliers.

Working closely with its customers to understand unique business requirements, Fifosys’ approach offers; reduced complexity & risk, excellent account management and assistance, with state-of-the-art technology coupled with clear service level agreements, selective outsourcing and 24/7 IT support. Services include the end-to-end designing, developing, implementing and supporting of the technology infrastructure to ensure a trouble free and secure IT environment; improving services, reducing costs and increasing productivity.

This approach allows Fifosys to offer its customers the opportunity to turn IT into a strategic business asset for competitive advantage, allowing the customer to focus on its core business functions, whilst Fifosys concentrates on getting the IT to support and drive the business forward. Fifosys is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Microsoft Small Business Specialist, Google Enterprise Partner, Dell Partner, part of the Citrix Partner Network, Zen Internet Platinum Partner, Juniper Service Specialist and a McAfee Security Alliance Certified Partner.

“Deloitte” is the brand under which tens of thousands of dedicated professionals in independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management and tax services to selected clients. These firms are members of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a Swiss Verein (”DTT”). Each member firm provides services in a particular geographic area and is subject to the laws and professional regulations of the particular country or countries in which it operates. DTT helps coordinate the activities of the member firms but does not itself provide services to clients. DTT and the member firms are separate and distinct legal entities, which cannot obligate the other entities. DTT and each DTT member firm are only liable for their own acts or omissions, and not those of each other. Each DTT Member Firm is structured differently in accordance with national laws, regulations, customary practice and other factors, and may secure the provision of professional services in their territories through subsidiaries, affiliates and/or other entities.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a Swiss Verein, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity. Please see http://www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and its Member Firms.

The potential total contract value is estimated to be up to $2.9 billion assuming the successful negotiation of all anticipated country specific agreements and the provision of the full scope of services in all the planned countries over the initial ten-and-a-half year term. Services are expected to commence under the master service agreement and one or more country specific agreements in the first half of 2010. All of the agreements are subject to regulatory and other approvals and notifications, including consultation of relevant workers councils.

Under the terms of the agreement, depending on the country specific agreements entered into, up to approximately 1,000 Zurich employees will potentially transition to CSC during the first half of 2010.

The relationship between Zurich and CSC began in July 2004 when the companies signed a seven-year, $1.3 billion applications outsourcing contract. In 2008, the scope of work expanded to include desktop services in Europe and North America.

All statements in this press release and in all future press releases that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements represent the company’s intentions, plans, expectations and beliefs, and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside the company’s control. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. For a written description of these factors, see the section titled “Risk Factors” in CSC’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 3, 2009 and any updating information in subsequent SEC filings. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update these forward-looking statements whether as a result of subsequent event or otherwise, except as required by law.

CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled solutions and services through three primary lines of business. These include Business Solutions and Services, the Managed Services Sector and the North American Public Sector. CSC’s advanced capabilities include systems design and integration, information technology and business process outsourcing, applications software development, Web and application hosting, mission support and management consulting. Headquartered in Falls Church, Va., CSC has approximately 92,000 employees and reported revenue of $16.0 billion for the 12 months ended October 2, 2009. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.csc.com.

–  Converged networking is coming in the form of iSCSI over Ethernet or
Fibre Channel over Ethernet. Both strategies can co-exist negating the
need to choose one or the other.
–  WAN optimization has kept its promise of lower utilization and better
application response, both of which have significant real business
benefit.
–  Virtual networking in the hypervisor is adequate for most cases, but
as datacenters become more automated, a uniform management plane is
needed for bridging the physical and virtual network.

“I found the presentations an effective way to listen to the current issues in high-performance networking from some of the industry leaders themselves, and enjoyed interactively asking my questions and making relevant points,” said Brian Morey, Architect at EB3 Communications. “I would highly recommend this format to any computing professionals, and look forward to seeing what you have up next time.”
“Our panel of experts laid out the benefits of converged networking beyond the hype and showed how different tools can be used without requiring disruptive changes,” said Mike Fratto, Editor, Network Computing.
Sponsors of the virtual event included Blue Coat, Citrix, Microsoft, Juniper Networks, Silver Peak, thawte, APC, VMware, Brocade, Infoblox, KACE and nlyte.
Virtual event participation statistics include:
–  Over 1,300 registrants
–  Approximately 700 attendees
–  Average time spent in show: 1 hour,  49 minutes
–  Average booth visit time per attendee: 7 minutes

For more information, please visit, http://techweb.com/nwc-virtual. The event will be archived until November 12, 2010.
TechWeb’s next virtual event is scheduled for December 9, 2009, hosted by InformationWeek’s Dark Reading and Black Hat, titled IT Security: The Next Decade. For more information, please visit http://techweb.com/ITsecurity.
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The development center, managed by Infosys’s subsidiary, Infosys Technologies S. De R.L. De CV, provides technology services for clients in all industries including banking, financial services, manufacturing, retail, distribution, insurance, and many others.

“From our first development center opening with a few clients and a dozen employees, we now have some 30 clients and 330 professionals and the future looks muy brillante,” said Ashok Vemuri, Senior Vice President and member of Executive Council, Infosys Technologies. “Our public-private partnership with the city of Monterrey and the government of Nuevo Leon, Mexico demonstrates that such unions create opportunities for the city’s very talented new graduates from local universities. And it clearly creates tremendous value for clients around the world who increasingly look to our centers in Latin America for the solutions they need.”

Both Monterrey facilities provide Infosys with dedicated resources to serve clients primarily in North America, Latin America and Europe with bilingual talent in an agreeable time zone and close proximity. Furthermore, it strengthens the company’s global delivery model capabilities with such other development centers in the Czech Republic, Poland, Thailand, Philippines, China, Australia and India.

After examining several countries in the region, Infosys chose to establish a presence in Mexico due to the broad language skills available in the region, its geographical proximity to Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Latin America is a strong emerging market and one where many of Infosys’ clients have operations already.

Infosys Technologies Limited defines, designs and delivers IT-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a Flat World. These solutions focus on providing strategic differentiation and operational superiority to clients. With Infosys, clients are assured of a transparent business partner, world-class processes, speed of execution and the power to stretch their IT budget by leveraging the Global Delivery Model that Infosys pioneered. Infosys has over 105,000 employees in over 50 offices worldwide. Infosys is part of the NASDAQ-100 Index and The Global Dow. For more information, visit www.infosys.com.

The new Center – a pool of deep subject matter experts who will be deployed globally to support clients anywhere in the world – is expected to have a staff of over 200 consultants with advanced analytics skills. These experts will collaborate with local client teams to craft advanced solutions that apply analytics to a company’s most complex information-based challenges and biggest opportunities. The Center will also feature deep and scalable skills and capabilities for clients in the world’s emerging growth markets.

The demand for deep analytical skills has begun to emerge as a strategic imperative as companies seek a competitive advantage in today’s transformed global economy. In fact, 83 percent of CIOs in the recently released IBM Global CIO Study identified business intelligence and analytics – the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights – as their number-one priority to enhance their organizations’ competitiveness.

IBM’s extensive investment in highly differentiated services capability is manifested in the operating model for the new Business Analytics Center of Competency. The Center will house experts with unique skills and expertise in deploying IBM patented analytics capabilities and assets that address specific, targeted analytical applications. For example, the team features experts in the area of advanced customer analytics and social media analytics. The team is using IBM patented analytics techniques in these two areas to help clients in the telecommunications, retail and financial services industries to improve customer service and retention.

“The new Business Analytics Center of Competency is an important component in our rapidly expanding and unmatched portfolio of business analytics capabilities,” said Fred Balboni, Global Leader, IBM Business Analytics and Optimization. “Through our extensive experience we’ve built the broadest and most sophisticated analytics services and solutions in the industry and are deploying them to address our clients’ most profound business issues.”

The new IBM Business Analytics Center of Competency will focus on a number of core areas vital to successfully applying analytics to industry problems. Some of these areas include: Web 2.0 Analytics, Risk and Fraud Analytics, Financial Analytics, Customer Analytics and Enterprise Business Analytics Strategy. The Center will also have a deep set of analytical skills focused on helping clients gather and manage the right information and insights to improve their performance.

The Business Analytics Center of Competency will also support IBM’s recently announced network of global Business Analytics Solutions Centers. The centers, located in Berlin, Beijing, New York and Tokyo – soon to be joined by Washington, DC and London – are in place to serve clients in those local markets, with specializations in areas like Smarter Cities, Transportation and Federal Government.

In these centers, IBM draws upon its vast information management portfolio, including technologies from IBM Software, Hardware, and IBM Research, along with industry expertise from over 4,000 consultants in the Business Analytics and Optimization Services practice.

In addition to Business Analytics, IBM has created four other Centers of Competency focused on deploying resources and capabilities to high-priority, strategic engagements around the world. This new model – unencumbered by national boundaries – gives clients access to industry-focused, world-class, senior expertise in business transformation, along with assets, best practices and delivery capabilities, garnered from numerous global engagements. The other IBM Centers include skilled experts in the areas of Strategy and Change, Banking/Financial Markets, Telecommunications, and Energy/Utilities.

All told, since IBM established its Migration Factory program three years ago to help clients move to IBM systems, nearly 2,000 customers have switched to IBM servers and storage, primarily from Sun and HP, including approximately 400 from Sun and 200 from HP this year.

The company also reported that 84 clients moved to IBM Power Systems from Sun alone in the third quarter. Customers are turning to IBM for its long-term investments in systems and stable, innovative product roadmaps, producing systems that are designed for specific purposes, such as business analytics and ultra-high transactions processing.

IBM’s momentum continues in UNIX servers, where the company gained 7.4 points in the second quarter to lead with 41.4 percent revenue share, ahead of Sun at 27.3 percent (down 4.4 points) and HP at 24.8 percent (down 1.6 points), according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. IBM is the only major UNIX vendor to gain revenue share in the past five years (+11 points) while both Sun (-2.5 points) and HP (-4.6 points) lost share.

IBM reported that it gained five points of share in Power Systems in the third quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of share gains. In addition, IBM System x systems gained two points of share, and IBM storage also gained share in the third quarter.

IBM increased the revenue generated from competitive Power Systems displacements of both Sun and HP customers to over $150 million in the third quarter. This amounts to more than $400 million in sales from UNIX competitive takeouts this year.

IBM has moved customers from competitive systems to IBM systems in industries such as financial services, communications, public sector, healthcare, retail, and general business. Customers that recently switched to IBM include Apollo Pharmacy, India Cements, Menzies Distribution and Sun TV Network (SDTV).

IBM has built a world-class migration capability to help customers move from their current non-IBM gear to IBM Systems – the IBM Migration Factory. The highly successful program includes competitive server assessments, migration services, and other resources.

Under the agreement, IBM will implement a hosted, virtualised server and storage environment and provide emergency back-up from a further IBM data center, enabling a flexible, robust disaster recovery system.

By using a variety of virtualisation systems the University will reduce the number of machines from around 250 to 25 at the primary data center; electricity usage by 40%, from around 47 kW/hour to 27 kW/hour; and physical space requirements from approximately 1,000 square feet to 400 square feet.

The University will also see a reduction in the power and space requirements of its on campus machine rooms, helping it meet government energy saving targets.

The new infrastructure will also bring other significant benefits including: lower operating costs; improved collaboration tools; increased storage space; improved storage management tools; and higher levels of service to teaching staff and students alike.

For Middlesex University, the scalability of the solution was critical. The University already has a campus in Dubai and will shortly open another in Mauritius and this project enhances its ability to underpin plans for international expansion.

Steve Knight, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, explained, “We need a system that allows flexibility according to our changing requirements and this solution does just that. We were looking for a platform solution to complement our longer term plans to achieve a dynamic infrastructure. In IBM we have a found a partner who shares our technology vision and can help us achieve our strategic goals.”

Fraser Davidson, IBM UK Vice President, Public Sector commented, “Middlesex University has an impressive vision to use technology to consistently deliver the best teaching materials both remotely to students and for students using IT on campus.”

Paula Vickers, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Director of Computing and Communication Systems Service at Middlesex, said, “We needed to upgrade our existing hardware and were looking for a solution that offered reliable, modern, scalable infrastructure to underpin the University’s business systems and activities. A key requirement was a solution that also helped reduce our carbon footprint through the deployment of modern, energy-saving hardware.”

Under the agreement, IBM will provide Remote Managed Information Services, offering IT management and support to Middlesex University, thus freeing its IT team’s time to focus on skills and knowledge development in areas of strategic significance to the University. Round the clock monitoring of the University’s IT infrastructure will enable IBM staff to proactively address issues before anyone at the University is even aware of them.

“By minimising the day-to-day support and maintenance our IT team provides, we can refocus our time on strategic initiatives and new technologies. As a result of this agreement, teaching staff and students will also experience less disruption as routine maintenance work can increasingly be conducted out of hours,” said Paula Vickers.

The solution also addresses Middlesex University’s email and file storage requirements. Through server and storage consolidation and virtualisation, the organisation’s storage capacity will be increased by 45%, from 48 to 70 terabytes, exploiting the benefits of IBM XIV Storage System and IBM System x3850 M2 hardware.