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Police forces in England and Wales are having to switch IT procurement from the Buying Solutions' Commodity IT Hardware and Software (CITHS) framework in favour of the SPRINT ii agreement.
CITHS came into effect in March 2010, with 20 suppliers offering PCs, IT infrastructure and software.
But according to Computer Weekly's sister title, MicroScope, the Home Office is now instructing police forces that previously bought through CITHS to procure volume hardware and software via SPRINT ii.
The coalition last month laid before Parliament The Police Act 1995 (Equipment Regulation) 2011, which came into force on 4 March, stating: "The Act sets out the mandatory use by police forces (where no existing contractual arrangements exist) of the SPRINT ii f/work."
A Home Office spokesman said SPRINT ii was "chosen to be the mandated vehicle for the police force purchase of commoditised hardware and commercial off-the-shelf software, for the primary reason that, based on benchmarking undertaken, it represented the best value for money".
He said the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) undertook this measurement exercise, and price, exclusive of VAT, was analysed for each framework.
"SPRINT ii is an open-book framework, therefore giving forces full transparency over the cost price paid by the supplier. As a single supplier framework, Sprint ii allows for the complete capture of management information and generates significant resource savings for forces in not requiring them to compete via mini-competition," he added.
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Technology has long been a critical element of M&A transactions. Handled correctly, it can be a key driver of value, enabling business processes to operate more efficiently, but done incorrectly, it can have devastating consequences, write Anthony Treccapelli (pictured) and Yawar Murad.
Carve-outs involve the separation of a business unit or assets from a larger corporation to establish a standalone entity. In our turbulent economic times, these transactions have become increasingly popular with corporate and private equity investors, as companies have refocused on core operations and sold off business units to raise cash or dispose of non-strategic assets.
Structuring and managing technology in a carve-out transaction can be a very complex undertaking, and CIOs must be given sufficient time to plan ahead. In the heat of the deal, those leading the transaction believe that the technology will just work, and not enough time is spent ensuring that critical infrastructure, legacy systems and systems provided by the seller are still available during the transition period. CIOs therefore have a duty of care to ensure that risks are managed and the 'carved-out' entity can operate post-transaction, without depending indefinitely on the seller's transitional systems.
Consider the experience of a major chain of health clubs that acquired additional clubs through a carve-out. While the acquiring business assumed it would easily be able to transfer data for customers of the other clubs, the process went awry and disrupted the billing systems. Some customers received the wrong invoices. Others received no bills at all. There were breakdowns in the process through which monthly membership dues were paid. Revenue plunged and cash collections dropped dramatically within a month, causing the company's banks to shut off its credit line and forcing the buyer to make a major, unplanned capital infusion. A situation that was entirely avoidable with up-front planning had put the very future of the company at stake and radically altered the deal's economics.
Therefore, CIOs must make sure IT is well represented when the deal is struck. We believe that firms should apply the following model, which has three distinct and tightly sequenced phases:
Seamless operations
The first imperative is that the business must be operational on Day 0, i.e. when the deal closes. A common way to ensure this is to establish a robust transition services agreement (TSA), an agreement that contractually binds the seller to provide continuity of service for a limited period of time. TSAs should be well-defined and closely managed to enable continuity of critical IT services, while separation from the seller is planned and executed. Poor TSAs, where services are missing or under-specified, or where financial responsibility is unclear, can result in conflict and business under-performance during this critical transition period.
Stabilise and separate
Once Day 0 is successfully delivered, CIOs must move quickly to separate from the seller, and ensure their carved-out entity is capable of standing alone.
Separation can be a tricky exercise, depending on how intertwined the carved-out business is with the seller. Splitting shared systems, making technology selection decisions, assigning/renegotiating contracts, selecting strategic vendors, etc. are time-consuming at the best of times, and can be seen as a distraction when the business is trying to stand on its own two feet.
CIOs must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good enough, and can use this opportunity to demonstrate a hard nose for business. Buying new technology assets, for example, will impact capital costs, while renting them via an outsourced/cloud solution can be expensed, which can lower initial spend and increase the speed of implementation. The bottom line is stabilising the business quickly before the TSA term runs out, and leaving perfection for a later date - in our experience, a bias towards action will be well served here.
Optimise
Those who are most successful with carve-out transactions choose to optimise IT assets after they have successfully stabilised and separated the new entity. Quite simply, this is the bottom line for the CIO.
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Anthony Treccapelli is a managing director at global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal. He leads the Information Technology Solutions team in New York.
Yawar Murad is a director with Alvarez & Marsal. He is a member of the Performance Improvement practice in London.
Alvarez & Marsal is an independent global professional services firm which draws on its deep operational and turnaround heritage to help companies across the industry spectrum improve operating and financial performance, and to navigate business, litigation and tax matters.
"HTML5 provides new ways to create highly interactive sites and explicitly addresses more security that its predecessors.
"Browser databases and changes to the Same Origin Rule help developers create more advanced sites. But new elements and new features may introduce new script injection (XSS) attacks. They also add new code to the browser, which may have bugs that can be exploited to spread malware or attack the desktop.
"HTML5 also entwines privacy and security more closely. Browsers finally stopped supporting the terribly insecure SSLv2 only within the past few years, in spite of some websites still having it configured. Now it's up to websites to start applying SSL (HTTPS) more rigorously. As browsers become the primary means of storing, sharing and manipulating information - whether financial, medical, professional, or social - the necessity of encrypting that traffic increases.
"The best ways to protect your browser are to keep it up to date - along with its plug-ins. And to be wary of using public wi-fi networks when you want to visit sites that don't strictly enforce HTTPS throughout its pages."
Mike Shema, security research engineer at Qualys
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Targeting consumers through smartphone apps is proving to be a good business bet. Jenny Williams reports on the costs of creating apps for different mobile marketplaces
From retailers to banks, most business-to-consumer companies (B2C) are developing mobile apps to allow customers to access services and information as well as shop online. But what are the challenges for companies developing mobile apps?
The benefits are clear. EBay more than tripled mobile trade in 2010, generating nearly $2bn in sales compared to $600m in 2009. Debenhams has launched Android and Nokia apps after its iPhone app achieved 360,000 downloads and sales of nearly ?1m within five months of launch.
Harriet Williams, head of digital development at Debenhams, says mobile apps build on its multi-channel strategy. "Launching on the Android and Nokia platforms opens Debenhams mobile shopping to millions more customers, bridging the gap between the high street and Debenhams.com," she said.
But creating apps for multiple mobile devices will be increasingly difficult as businesses look to minimise app development costs and tackle discrepancies between app store requirements, while still providing a rich user experience.
App store costs
Developing apps for single mobile platforms to use mobile device specifications, also known as native apps, can be costly.
Apple's iTunes app store, Google's Android Market, Nokia's Ovi Store and Research in Motion's Blackberry App World are among the leading mobile application stores. Apple currently only accepts native apps for its app store.
Current annual fees for app stores are relatively inexpensive. Microsoft and Apple charge an annual developer fee of $99, Google charges $25.
However, in addition to annual fees, app store owners take a cut of sales. For most app store owners it is 30%. This could change in the next couple of years as antitrust regulators in Europe and the US consider the revenue share between app store owners and suppliers.
Price of app development
More than app store charges, the cost of app development can be substantial.
Terence Eden, independent mobile consultant, says hiring developers and graphic designers, buying equipment and software licences for each platform, such as Microsoft Visual Studio, as well as clearance for images and software testing all adds to the cost.
"Companies should be wary of spending less than ?15,000 to ?25,000 a platform to develop a native app," says Eden.
Cross-platform development
In addition, producing an app for a single platform may not be sufficient to reach target customers.
Eden believes most businesses have to design and build apps on three or four different mobile platforms, each with its own rules and requirements, to reach all the target customers.
Launching as well as updating apps simultaneously across platforms is also near impossible due to the different app acceptance rules, which Eden says is a PR challenge for organisations.
Organisations are turning to third-party companies, such as Grapple Mobile, to write an app in HTML once and roll a version out for all platforms.
New web standards for cross-platform apps
Ovum analyst Adam Leach says new web standards could help companies to develop across mobile platforms by opting for mobile web apps instead of native apps.
"HTML 5, Java and WAC [Wholesale Applications Community], are all ways of getting apps across to a lot of feature phones."
"HTML 5 increases the level of interactivity in websites so they behave more like [mobile] apps," says Leach.
"The danger is that the specification of HTML 5 is not going to be rectified until 2014, which gives vendors lots of time to do their own implementations and support different extensions," he says.
Web-based apps have slower response times and can compromise user experience by not using device functionality. Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner says native apps offers a "more personal and richer experience to the 'vanilla' experience" of a web-based app.
App frameworks
Dale Vile at Freeform Dynamics says a lot of enterprises will look to use deployment frameworks, such as the customer experience management tools provided by Adobe. This allows a native app to be defined once in a framework and rendered for different devices.
"If the organisation relies on image-centric apps, it might want to go for a framework approach for the presentation. If it's an online bank, it's probably better to go down the [web] standards route."
Web applications and frameworks might offer businesses the opportunity to cut costs and bridge multiple mobile platforms, but at present Apple only accepts native apps on its devices.
Organisations will need to consider whether to compromise user experience and brand consistency when opting for app development methods under new web standards and framework deployment tools.
The security benefits and pitfalls of using HTML5 for web apps
Five concerns from developers about app stores