Monday 27 February 2012

The Hewlett Packard Institute

According to Hewlett Packard, the IT sector perceive that there is ‘a growing shortage of job-ready IT professionals with the right skills to grow…businesses’. To address this Hewlett Packard are launching an academic partnership programme helping students understand how IT solutions integrate within a business. De Montfort University (DMU) is one of the HP Institute launch partners who piloted the programme in its Informatics department. A GCSE version of the course is in a consultation stage with HP looking to find more academic partners. The full programme will consist of four modules including IT service management standard ITIL, a servers and storage applications module and a cloud module. In an interview online with Computer World UK, Nick Wilson, vice president and managing director of HP UK and Ireland admitted that ‘the programme will have an HP bias’ although skills learnt will be ‘transferable.’ Read the full article and interview at http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/careers/3339961/hp-launches-institute-programme-improve-graduates-business-skills/

Monday 20 February 2012

Fibre-optic broadband rankings

According to the body that monitors households with fibre-optic connections, the FTTH (Fibre to the Home) Council, Europe is still lagging behind other countries.
The council holds a ranking list on which countries are placed when a minimum level of 1% is reached. The U.K. has still not reached this worldwide ranking table, according to an article on the TechWeek Europe website. Those countries that have recently made the list are Canada and Malaysia. The European Union has a target‘to ensure that more than 50 per cent of the European households will use broadband connections of 100Mbit/s or more in 2020.” In the U.K. the government has a target to roll out ‘Europe’s best superfast broadband network by 2015’. Countries in Europe already on the ranking list are Lithuania with 28% of households linked to FTTH, Norway (15%) and Sweden (14%). Read more on worldwide fibre-optic developments in the full article here http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/uk-misses-out-in-world-fibre-rankings-61655

Monday 13 February 2012

What IT projects can learn from engineering

Some large information technology projects suffer, rightly or wrongly, from a reputation for failure. Would they benefit from a more rigorous adherence to project planning? On his blog on the Institute of Management Information systems website, David Bicknell argues that large information technology projects, and the departments that manage them, may do well to take a leaf out of the engineering department’s book. He looks at ‘Agile’ development where the purchaser must use flexible tools to ensure changing requirements can be met as the project progresses.
Successful projects acknowledge “right from the start that requirements were bound to change and controls must be put in place to manage this. “He concludes that “the discipline driven by an engineering-based approach is generally more likely to lead to success. That’s why bridges get built – and IT projects often don’t.” Whether you build bridges or IT systems take a look at the article here: http://www.imis.org.uk/blog/2012/02/06/Adopting_an_engineering-based_approach_to_IT

Monday 6 February 2012

IT and the transport sector

How are IT developments affecting the needs of the transport and distribution sector? A detailed article in CIO (Chief Information Officer) magazine, looks at issues affecting the rail, aircraft and mail delivery sectors.
Royal Mail Group, for example, are said to have had website issues with some services such as online postage systems not available at some points during the festive period. Elsewhere, there was more positive IT news with the decision that Network Rail is to ‘upgrade its entire Cisco switch and router estate’. The three year, multimillion pound contract has been won by O2 Unify. Such upgrades are intended to reduce cost but may also ‘improve the efficient of information systems to customers.’ In the aircraft sector, British Airways are also looking to improve information systems by trialling iPads with senior crew members. For more information on the interaction between IT systems and the UK transport sector read the full
article at http://www.cio.co.uk/article/3334656/the-long-and-winding-road/