Serving Generation Y

jul 06 2015

Almost half of local aauthorities are unprepared to meet the needs of ‘Generation Y’, an LGC survey has revealed. The research, conducted in association with Civica, found that a significant proportion of local authorities are not redesigning services to cope with the demands of people born in the 1980s and 1990s - the ‘digital natives’ with high expectations of technology within service delivery. LGC’s research found that 41% of local authorities either do not know what Generation Y’s needs are, or have not yet put in place any steps to address their needs.

Published by Local Government Chronicle Published in print by Local Government Chronicle - #

Home Secretary named Internet Villain at the 2015 ISPA Awards

jul 03 2015

ISPA announced the winners of the 17th Annual UK Internet Industry Awards, the ISPAs. Eighteen awards were given out on the night with dozens of innovative providers and organisations present at the ceremony in the City of London. David Davis MP and Tom Watson MP were jointly named as Internet Hero for their legal action against DRIPA, seeing off competition from the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Privacy International and GreenNet and Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. David Anderson QC. Surveillance has dominated both the Hero and Villain shortlists for number of years, and it was felt Davis and Watson were some of the best informed politicians on the subject.

Published by Noodls - #

ISPA Reveal Winners from the 2015 UK ISP Internet Industry Awards

jul 02 2015

The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has officially announced the winners of their 17th annual 2015 Internet Industry Awards, which saw Hyperoptic pick-up the prize for “Best Superfast Broadband” provider (third time in a row) and they also secured the gong for “Best Consumer Fixed Broadband“. But there were many more categories and winners. This year the event, which was held at The Brewery in the City of London, included the addition of four new categories: ‘Best SME Broadband‘, ‘Best Enterprise Broadband‘, a new ‘Safety Award‘ for those who have made an impact in that field and a ‘Security Award‘ for the best Internet related security product or initiative.

Published by ISPreview - #

Winners of 2015 ISPA Awards announced

jul 02 2015

The 2015 ISPA Award winners have finally been announced after the original process to select the winners started in December 2014. The awards dinner was held at The Brewery London, close to TechHub in Shoreditch. The awards ceremony is the result of 8 months work which started in December 2014 with providers putting themselves forward, several months of technical testing in a number of categories and a judging panel selecting the eventual winner from short lists. Every year there are complaints about some providers never been mentioned and it is very much a case of you have to be in it to win it, so if you feel your provider should have been there make sure they step forward when the registration for the 2016 awards opens.

Published by Think Broadband - #

The IT channel's top sibling duos

jun 18 2015

New NetApp CEO George Kurian and his brother Thomas, who was already product boss of Oracle, have just become the most powerful twin combo in the IT industry. Often though, siblings have chosen to work in partnership in their pursuit of IT industry glory, with the channel littered with examples of successful consanguineous pairings. And who better to lean on when it comes to matters of business than your own flesh and blood; someone who knows your virtues and peculiarities better than even you do? Here we take a look at some of the top kinsfolk combos proving that family loyalties often breed business success in the channel.

Published by CRN - #

IT suppliers call on new-look GDS for commitment to G-Cloud's future

may 15 2015

G-Cloud suppliers are urging the newly elected Conservative government not to make any sweeping changes to the framework, for fear it could put the public sector off procuring services through it. Having secured an overall majority in the 2015 general election, resulting in the dissolution of its coalition with the Liberal Democrats, suppliers hope the Conservative Party’s victory will mean it is business as usual as far as G-Cloud is concerned. This is despite the news that Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, the creator of the Government Digital Service, has left his post to become the minister of state for trade and industry.

Published by Computer Weekly - #

Weaker Q2 guidance knocks 13% off Rackspace shares

may 12 2015

Rackspace shares dropped 13% in afterhours trading following its Q1 results announcement. Revenue was up 16.6% over 2014 on a current currency basis with adjusted EBITDA margin at 33.6%. However, the company disappointed on Q2 guidance, which indicates a sequential quarterly growth rate of 1.5%-2.5% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 32%-34%. Rackspace blames the longer implementation cycles associated with the increasing number of larger enterprise deals it’s signing. It also said it will be hit by the loss of one of its largest UK customers, which is moving out of Rackspace's UK data centre for data sovereignty reasons. The media and bloggers always tend to compare Rackspace with the cloud pure-plays - notably AWS. However, the company faces a whole raft of IT services competition, from small hosting firms such as Memset (see SME Snapshot: Memset), to resellers (see Cloud: Opportunities and challenges for resellers), and of course the large ITS companies.

Published by Tech Market View - #

Memset’s PSN-Protected data centre goes live

may 11 2015

Memset, British SME supplier of cloud hosting services to the UK public sector, has announced that its government accredited data centre facility is now fully live with its connection to PSN-Protected, the highest level of PSN security. Driven by a desire to bring the best of commodity public cloud prices to higher government security tiers, Memset invested £1.8m constructing a highly efficient, highly scalable IL4-capable data centre in Dunsfold Park, Surrey which was completed in July 2014.

Published by Digital By Default - #

VARs braced for election-fuelled turbulence

may 07 2015

The imminent change in government means public sector IT projects could be stalled or obstructed, according to some in the channel, who fear "welcome developments" brought in by the coalition are at risk. People across the UK have begun voting in the general election this morning. The coalition government was dissolved on 30 March and the new parliament will meet officially for the first time on 18 May. Public sector IT supplier Memset said it is expecting some turbulence in government technology regardless of the outcome of today's vote.