News and Analysis to 21^st October 2004

Sainsbury – Making life taste better

Well this certainly applies to Accenture, who is responsible for the retail giant’s business transformation project. A transformation has certainly happened, Sainsbury’s recent profit warning suggests that it is on target to achieve its worst results in all its 135 years. Consequently Sainsbury is ‘writing off’ £260m in redundant IT assets and renegotiating the contract with Accenture. Look out for the new range of discounted IT kit. This is a limited offer.

Offsurething

Offshoring is a sure thing according to research firm IDC, which sees compound annual growth of 20% to $17bn by 2008. This will be driven by the need for organisations to drive down costs. But be aware that the offshorers are increasingly offering IT management and consulting services. The trick is to race up the food chain to avoid your job going overseas. CIO level or above should be safe enough.

Golden PeopleShoot

Recently ousted PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway appeared to be an expert at setting up commercial clauses that would make Oracle’s threatened acquisition quite unpalatable. However his masterstroke was the clause that kicked in if he was shown the door. He will be heading off to the job centre with $18m in his back pocket.

Sorry, no blue suits

Beleaguered IT services player EDS has not been idle. It has managed to entwine itself with the futures of Cisco, Dell, EMC, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Xerox, which it hopes will redefine the IT services game. These players have committed to investing in technologies that EDS can deploy and to this end they will pool 400 engineers at EDS’s headquarters. As with EDS, many of the alliance’s members are keen to hurt IBM. Is this going to take EDS to new heights or are the alliance members using EDS as an expendable stalking horse?

IBM – So solid

Services to box shifter giant IBM performed strongly despite swallowing a $320m charge in relation to a pension plan dispute. Specifically its system and technology group’s income was up 32.4%. The personal systems division was up 16.7% and the software division increased by 17.8%.

Google yourself

The race is on to offer integrated web and desktop searching tool. Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL and AskJeeves are jostling for position. But Google has got there first. This free download will integrate emails, files and instant messages to enable users to seamlessly search their desktop computer. Beware. Allowing your desktop to be googled will make life easier for malware programmes, which will use Google’s index files as an A to Z for finding confidential information such as credit cards.

Microsoft’s quilt complex

The recent volume of Microsoft’s software vulnerabilities patches is a cause for concern. These are spread over ten downloads, seven of which are regarded as critical. The vulnerabilities cover most versions of Windows. Apple users should not feel left out as the Microsoft Office vulnerabilities affect (infect?) them to.

Internet telephony is unaVoIPable

10% of all US homes will use VoIP (Voice over IP), better known as Internet telephony, by 2009 according to Jupiter Research. Broadband connected homes will lead the way. Given that VoIP has the impact to make telephone calls free, it will be interesting to see how the telecoms providers handle this life threatening technology.