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Alexa, Siri, Bixby, stand aside, there is a new top dog in town, which may finally usher in the level of conversational AI we have all been waiting for. Yesterday OpenAI revealed its latest model GPT-4o, which brings significant improvements to ChatGPT and a more human-like ability to converse. If you haven’t seen the demo yet then I highly recommend you take 10 mins after reading this to go and watch it (See here).
GPT-4o (“o” for “omni”) is the latest model from OpenAI, and it really does represent a significant step towards much more natural human-computer interaction. It accepts input from any combination of text, audio, and image and can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, which is similar to human response times in a conversation. It also matches GPT-4 Turbo performance on text in English and code, while also being much faster and 50% cheaper in the API.
Now I don’t want to get too carried away with the hype, but I must admit on first glance it truly is an impressive step forward. The short demo from OpenAI showed how GPT-4o can converse so naturally compared to the slow, and largely unhelpful voice assistants we are used to. This new version of ChatGPT is capable of real-time conversational speech, which includes the ability for you to interrupt it, ask it to change tone, and react to user emotions.
During the demo we saw ChatGPT make up a bed time story, demonstrating the ability to sound not just natural, but dramatic and emotional, it could also sing and tell the story with varying degrees of intensity. Language is an area it seems to really excel at, seamlessly translating between Italian and English in real-time. It could also be a game changer when it come to Education, acting as an invaluable personal tutor. During the demo it used a combination of new vision capabilities and conversational AI to walk the user through how to solve an equation, adapting to what was written, but without just giving the answer. It could also view and analyse code, describe potential issues and even in layman terms explain what the code actually does.
This type of conversational AI is what many of us (certainly myself) have been waiting so long for. It has echoes of the fantastic 2013 movie ‘Her’, and yes while there are many kinks to work out, it paints a picture of the future state of AI we are heading towards. Give it another 5 years (maybe even less), when it is fully embedded across our devices, cars and other technologies, and I expect conversing with AI assistants will become such a natural day-to-day occurrence many of us will wonder how we ever did without them. There are already rumors Apple is in talks to incorporate OpenAI’s models and ChatGPT into its products, if true bringing such capabilities as seen in GPT-4o to our smartphone would be a significant next step towards that reality.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:54
Leicester and Hinckley Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) are aiming to transform their breathlessness diagnostic pathway using technology provided by Lenus Health.
Shortness of breath, or breathing difficulty (dyspnoea), is the most common reason for seeking medical help in the UK; however, NHS England says delays to diagnoses and misdiagnoses commonly occur. Breathlessness is reported by approximately 10% of the UK population, increasing with age to 25% in people over seventy years old.
The causes of breathlessness are often multifactorial, being associated with heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), obesity, anaemia, anxiety, and depression. This complexity makes it challenging to diagnose accurately and often leads to treatment delays.
To address these issues, Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board (ICB) aims to transform the existing symptom-based care pathway using Lenus Health's digital diagnostics platform, Lenus Diagnose. The solution will provide triaging, streamlined diagnostic data capture, enable multiple tests to be run concurrently, and allow remote specialists to provide input earlier in the decision-making process. It will be implemented at the existing Leicester CDC and the new Hinckley CDC, which is set to become operational in early 2025.
The collaboration brings together primary care, secondary care, and academic partners to support the implementation of this solution. Additionally, the University of Leicester and Lenus Health are working on an InnovateUK-funded Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate (AKT2I) project to generate evidence of the intervention's benefits.
Lenus Health spun out from Edinburgh-based digital transformation consultancy Storm ID in 2021 (see Healthtech startup Lenus Health gets funding boost from ResMed). Its data and AI solutions have already been implemented in heart failure, cardiovascular disease, and COPD pathways (see AI partnership to improve cardiac care in Scotland).
Posted by: Dale Peters at 09:43
Tags: nhs health innovation AI healthcare ICS
Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS – the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority subsidiary formerly known as Magnox) has extended its contract for ERP, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), and Talent Management software with cloud enterprise software supplier Unit4 in a deal worth £9.2m.
NRS employs 2,500 people across the UK and is responsible for decommissioning the country’s oldest nuclear reactors, as well as for electricity generation at Maentwrog hydroelectric power station.
The company is a longstanding customer of Unit4’s, having deployed its software (through partners Embridge Consulting) to provide an integrated view of finance and HR data – migrating from on-premise to Unit4’s SaaS-based ERP in 2017, and adding FP&A and Talent Management modules in 2022.
The company’s ongoing business transformation through Unit4 has already seen legacy processes modernised, bringing more agile, collaborative decision-making, responsive process automation, and increased efficiency. It’s projecting savings of 50 FTE hours per month as a result of using FP&A to shift from programme-based budgeting to a holistic view of the business, for example.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 09:41
Tags: extension FP&A
AIM-listed internet domain name and online marketing services provider, Team Internet Group (formerly CentralNic) continues to grow all be it at much slower rates than we have become accustomed.
Annual results for FY23 out in March saw the business expand revenue by 15% (13% organic) as the business continued to grow aggressively. Q1 2024 results out yesterday show the top line slowing on market pressure (lower prices per click) in the online marketing space. Gross revenue expanded by just 1% YoY to $195.9m (Q1 2023 $194.9m).
To recap, the business operates two complimentary portfolios of brands built mainly by several years of acquisition. Firstly, ‘online presence’ which includes the basic tools to get an organisation online – so things like web addresses, websites, hosting, email etc., all paid for via annual subscriptions. Secondly, it provides ‘online marketing’ services which both help attract customers to a site and generate revenues paid for via rolling open-ended revenue share contracts. Performance here has been diverging of late with online marketing seeing gross revenue reduce by -2.5% to $149.7m as market pressure has driven down the rates that can be charged. For example, revenue per thousand sessions (RPM) decreased by -10% from $102 to $91. The smaller online presence segment saw gross revenue head in the opposite direction increasing by 10.6% YoY to $50m in Q124.
Whilst the top line is under pressure the bottom line continues to improve as the business migrates towards higher margin activity and benefits from planned efficiency measures. Gross profit increased by 4% to $47.6m (Q1 2023 $45.8m), with gross margin increasing from 23.5% to 24.3%, whilst operating profit increased by 44% to $11.1m (Q123 $7.7m).
In discussions with management yesterday, it’s clear that they believe the pressure in the online marketing space is cyclical and something that will improve over coming months. To capitalise on better market conditions Team Internet strengthened its online marketing offer in Q1 getting back on the acquisition trail after a quiet 12 months or so, with March’s $41.8m agreement to buy online marketing business, Shinez and its subsidiaries (see here).
Shinez specialises in producing online content delivered across a range of channels, including social media and search engines, owning some 40 different websites including ourfashiontrends.com, falafelandcaviar.com and travelerdreams.com. Shinez reported $111m in gross revenue, $17.2m in net revenue and $10.4m in adjusted EBITDA for the year ending 31st December 2023.
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 09:33
Tags: results marketing domain+services online
Delighted to see that Ruth Ormsby has been appointed Managing Director, EMEA at Fenergo.
Fenergo provides Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) software solutions for financial institutions. Clients include the likes of ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, and Mizuho.
We have known Ruth for many years in her various high-level positions across the indusry. Most recently, she was Senior VP of industries in the UK at Salesforce (also a Fenergo customer) and before that MD, Head of Strategy and Growth for Technology UK&I at Accenture. She’s also had roles at Capgemini and Ernst & Young. Needless to say, she’ll be a real asset to Fenergo.
The company was founded by CEO, Marc Murphy, and in 2021 was acquired from Insight Partners by Astorg and Bridgepoint.
Not surprisingly, an important aspect of Ruth’s role will be establishing and maintaining key relationships for Fenergo. Ruth is an energetic and motivating leader who is highly skilled at building relationships right up to Board level. We wish her all the very best in her new role!
Posted by: Kate Hanaghan at 09:25
Tags: appointment leaders
Currys has selected Accenture and Microsoft, together with their joint venture Avanade, to deliver its core cloud infrastructure. The engagement will focus on modernising, securing and simplifying the omnichannel retailer’s technology estate with the objective of enabling Currys to accelerate the adoption of Microsoft AI technologies.
The transition will also support Currys achieve net zero emissions by 2040. Nine of the company’s existing data centres, comprising more than 2000 servers and 200 applications, will be moved onto Azure to create a more energy efficient infrastructure.
Over the past few years, Currys plc, which operates online and through 727 stores in 6 countries, has been striving to become a ‘digital-first’ omnichannel retailer. This process has seen the company working with LTIMindtree to establish a connected and highly personalised shopping experience for its customers across multiple markets (see here). Group CEO, Alex Baldock hopes that the collaboration with Accenture and Microsoft will put Currys at the forefront of digital transformation in retail.
Posted by: Duncan Aitchison at 10:03
Tags: contract cloud retail AI
UK Government’s HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has continued to spread its contracting wings with the award of three new contracts under its DALAS – Digital & Legacy Application Services - framework. IBM, Netcompany, and Accenture have been the beneficiaries of recently announced contracts, entitled Digital Platforms New Contract Build 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Further contributing to HMRC’s stated aim to expand its IT supplier landscape, under the rules of the framework, each supplier will have to have an ecosystem of at least three SMEs to which it is expected to pass a minimum of 20% of the revenues generated from HMRC business.
All three companies will be providing “large scale digital, integration and development new build services … to bring in professional services to allow for the creation of multiple disciplinary and agile delivery teams across HMRC's Digital Delivery Centres.”
The Accenture contract is the largest, valued at a maximum of £151m over the initial three-year period from 15th April 2024 (with an expectation that charges in the first year will be £48.5m). The IBM and Netcompany contracts are both worth a maximum of £75.3m over the same period (with an expectation that charges in the first year will be £24.5m). All contracts also have two optional one-year extensions; the first 12-month extension period has a maximum value of £58m for Accenture, and 29m for both IBM and Netcompany. The second 12-month extension has a maximum value of £62m for Accenture, and £31m for both IBM and Netcompany.
The contracts were let via DALAS framework Lot2a (digital, integration and programme application services (large scale)). There are six suppliers on the Lot; the other three are Capgemini, CGI, and Equal Experts.
Of the three winners of these contracts, Denmark-headquartered IT consultancy, Netcompany is the smallest, with c£700m of revenues globally, and c£75m in the UK. Notably, in its last financial results announcement, it cited increased time spent on tender preparation and business development for the DALAS framework for a 3.8% fall in its adjusted EBITDA margin in the UK (see Netcompany’s UK business up 21.9% in FY23, driven by public sector growth | TechMarketView). As predicted, it looks like the investment has paid off.
Posted by: Georgina O'Toole at 09:56
Tags: contract agile development application+services digital+services central+government public sector contract award
Billing and CRM software provider, Cerillion, has enjoyed an encouraging first half of FY24. Following a sequential top line decline during H223 (see here), the six months ended 31st March saw company turnover increase by 19.7% hoh and 10% yoy to £22.5m. Annualised recurring revenue for the period advanced at a more rapid pace improving by 14% yoy to £15m. Adjusted EBITDA margin held steady against H123 at 48.9%.
Cerillion’s total new orders were up 32% yoy to £20.2m in the first half. These included a major five-year contract, worth €12.4m, signed with a Tier-1 telco in Europe to support all fixed and mobile services. The uptick in sales momentum appears to be set to continue through the remainder of the FY. The company entered H2 with its new customer pipeline up 20% yoy to a record £254m. Post the reported period end, Cerillion secured a new five-year contract worth $11.1m with a leading provider of connectivity solutions in Southern Africa.
The telco arena has been proving a challenging space for many providers software and IT services over the last twelve months. Cerillion, however, reports that its trading backdrop remains favourable with the industry increasingly transitioning to SaaS solutions in the pursuit of operational and efficiency benefits.
Looking ahead, the company is confident of delivering to market expectations for the financial year. This suggests that the second half revenue expansion will accelerate to north of 16% yoy. Investors in the AIM-listed software house appear to share this optimism. At the time of writing, the company’s share price stood a third higher than a year ago.
Posted by: Duncan Aitchison at 09:53
Tags: results saas software telco
Telefónica Tech (T. Tech) posted worldwide revenues of €476m in Q1 24, representing +11% yoy growth, with bookings increasing by more than 30% yoy. Growth has more than halved compared to the c.27% yoy growth we saw from the business in FY23 (See - Another impressive year of growth for Telefónica Tech ), though still represents a very positive performance in what remains an uncertain market.
Q1 growth was driven by positive performance in the private sector, particularly in the Financial, Healthcare, and Manufacturing sectors. T. Cybersecurity & Cloud Tech and T. IoT & Data Tech revenues amounted to €413m (+11.2% y-o-y) and €63m (+8.2% y-o-y), respectively. Given the strong commercial performance and sales pipeline, T. Tech maintains a positive revenue outlook for the rest of the year.
Since 2023, T. Tech has been operating with Global Service Lines (GSL) as transversal units for all geographic units, enabling cross country synergies and unified portfolios. The company's IoT and BizApps GSLs launched in mid-2023, and paved the way for the NextDefense Cybersecurity service, which the UK&I business launched in March. See - Telefónica Tech UK&I launches NextDefense security).
As well as the launch of new cybersecurity capabilities, the UK&I business is also levelling up its cloud capabilities, leveraging AI Copilot solutions for the workplace, and enabling low code app development and automation. The business recently won a deal with Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) to provide numerous infrastructure technology solutions for its new digital children’s hospital (See - Telefónica Tech wins at Children’s Health Ireland). T. Tech’s global AI & Data capabilities have also enhanced through partnerships with Microsoft, Denodo, Palantir, and Teradata.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:39
The AI Safety Institute has launched a new platform, Inspect, aimed at enhancing global AI safety evaluations. This UK-built testing platform is set to accelerate the development of AI evaluations, fostering collaboration with researchers and developers worldwide.
In April, the U.S. and UK signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which will see the two countries work together to develop tests for the most advanced AI models, following through on commitments made at the AI Safety Summit last November (See - U.S and UK sign AI testing agreement). The Institute has clearly been hard at work since, rapidly moving forward its initiatives as it seeks to keep pace with the speed of AI innovation.
Inspect is a software library that allows testers from startups, academia, AI developers, and even international governments to assess specific capabilities of individual models and produce a score based on their results. It can be used to evaluate models in various areas, including their core knowledge, reasoning ability, and autonomous capabilities. The platform, released under an open-source license, is now freely available for the global AI community and marks the first time a state-backed body has spearheaded the release of an AI safety testing platform for wider use.
The release of Inspect comes at a critical time in AI development, with more powerful models expected to hit the market in 2024. This makes the push for safe and responsible AI development more pressing than ever.
Michelle Donelan, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, expressed her support for the platform, stating, "This puts UK ingenuity at the heart of the global effort to make AI safe, and cements our position as the world leader in this space."
AI Safety Institute Chair Ian Hogarth added “We hope to see the global AI community using Inspect to not only carry out their own model safety tests, but to help adapt and build upon the open-source platform so we can produce high-quality evaluations across the board”
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:31
Oxford-based “technology-driven ecological restoration” company Dendra Systems has raised $15.7m in a Series B round led by Zouk Capital with participation from Aramco Ventures, Airbus Ventures, Understorey Capital, and Helium-3 Ventures.
Founded in 2014, Dendra provides a solution (called RestorationOS) which combines high-resolution data capture, an AI-enabled “ecosystem insights platform”, and drone-based seeding to restore natural ecosystems at scale (and engage in ongoing monitoring, management and reporting for the duration of what are often multi-year projects).
Dendra currently manages over 70,000 hectares of land – typically working in mining, infrastructure, mangrove, and arid ecosystem restoration (customers include Rio Tinto, Glencore, Liontown, BHP, and the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi).
The company plans to use the funding to expand into new geographical markets and further develop its AI ecology platform.
Nature monitoring and management is a key use case for sustainability technology, and was highly-placed (in terms of amount of activity worldwide) in TechMarketView’s Sustainability Technology Activity Index – our unique take in the sustainability technology landscape.
What marks out Dendra’s interest in the area is that whilst many monitoring activities (such as the work of Atos and WWF in Key Biodiversity Areas, which we covered in a recent Totally Sust podcast) concentrate on protecting existing natural habitats, etc. with the intention of preventing – or providing early warning of – harm; Dendra’s focus is on recovering ecosystems which have already been damaged (by, say, mining activities or because of local arid conditions).
Subscribers to our SustainabilityViews research stream can download the Index now. If you are not yet a subscriber, or would like to learn more about our sustainability research, please contact Deb Seth for more information.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 09:15
Tags: drones nature
Japanese-headquartered technology corporation NTT and IT services and consulting player, NTT DATA, officially merged their respective IT services operations outside of Japan, back in October 2022 creating a new joint operating company NTT DATA, Inc. The combined company published results for FY23/24 (year to March 31st 2024) – its first full year as a consolidated business - that show Net Sales increasing by 25.1% to ¥4,367.4bn (FY22/23 ¥3,490.2bn). New orders received (excluding NTT Ltd) grew a whopping 75.8% to ¥4,790.9bn as the company delivered increased operating profits of ¥309.6bn, up 50.4%. Operating margins were 7.1% down -0.3bps on the previous year.
Revenue and operating profit growth is primarily attributed to the performance of its European and Japanese businesses as well as the consolidation of NTT Ltd. The EMEA and LATAM business did particularly well with Net Sales growing 136% to ¥828.5bn (FY22/23 ¥692.5bn) and EBITDA ticking up 7.7%. New orders received in the ‘region’ also grew by a whopping 102.3% to ¥876.9bn (FY22/23 ¥774.6bn).
Looking forward 2024/25 growth is expected to be quite different with Net Sales expected to tick up by just 1.4% YoY, whilst operating profit is anticipated to grow 8.5% YoY as the impact of the business consolidation falls away. That said, shareholders remain positive on the impact of the consolidation with NTT Data Group Corp share price still up more 21% on where it was a year ago. The Group is targeting a client base of 120 companies by the end of 2025 (currently 106) with revenue of ¥4,700bn. Investment called out to help achieve this (as part of its current three-year plan) predictably highlights a combination of generative AI and M&A in both Japan and overseas markets.
NTT DATA has made a significant step forward in scale off the back of NTT/NTT DATA consolidation. The challenge remains showing how this will contribute to sustained organic growth and executing on a new mid-term management strategy that promises to deliver on the potential of IT and connectivity convergence and genuine new business value propositions.
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 08:55
Tags: results IT+services
If (like me) you have previously bought something from Dell you might have received this email yesterday (see right). If so, you are not in the minority, as Dell warned yesterday it has been the target of a cyber-attack which has resulted in information being stolen on approximately 49m customers.
Dell warned that a threat actor claims to have stolen information which included names, physical addresses, and Dell hardware and order details. However, Dell offered assurances that financial or payment information, email addresses, and telephone numbers were not compromised.
As reported by Daily Dark Web, a threat actor named Menelik was found to be attempting to sell a Dell database on a hacking forum. The data, allegedly stolen from Dell, pertains to customer and other information systems purchased from Dell between 2017 and 2024. While the authenticity of this data has not been confirmed, it matches the information listed in Dell's data breach notification. The post has since been deleted from the forum, suggesting that another threat actor may have already purchased the database.
The incident seems to have involved a Dell portal which contained a database with limited type of customers information related to purchases from Dell. As the data did not include email addresses, we can rule out targeted online Phishing attacks as a follow up, but that doesn’t mean that victims can’t still be targeted. Threat actors could target specific people with physical mailings with phishing links or that contain media (DVDs/USB drives) to install malware on targets' devices. While this may sound far-fetched, threat actors have conducted similar attacks in the past. Therefore, be wary of any physical mail or emails you receive that claim to be from Dell asking you to install software, change passwords, or perform some other potentially risky action.
This is poor form for Dell, who offer ‘end-to-end’ cybersecurity for organisations, including zero trust architectures. Clearly, they are not taking their own medicine so to speak, and the attack highlights that even IT suppliers need to do much more to build their own cyber resilience.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 10:14
The past week has seen a slew of announcements from companies seeking to boost investment in the UK AI industry. The UK is increasingly seen as an attractive location for building AI capabilities, with a Pro-AI regulatory stance from the UK government, numerous hubs of talent from UK universities and strong demand from both enterprise corporations and UK startups for AI compute and solutions.
On Tuesday we covered San Francisco HQ’ed AI data infrastructure company Scale, who announced it is creating a new European HQ in London, as the company seeks to expand its global footprint (See AI data infrastructure platform Scale invests in UK).
In addition, CoreWeave, a cloud provider for AI, announced yesterday that it has opened an office in London as part of a broader expansion into Europe. The new UK expansion represents a £1 billion investment to bolster the country's AI potential, and will create job opportunities across engineering, operations, finance and go-to-market. CoreWeave plans to open two UK data centres in 2024 with further expansion planned in 2025.
Another was British self-driving car startup Wayve, who said on Tuesday that it had raised $1 billion in a Series C funding round led by SoftBank. Founded in 2017, Wayve is one of many startups looking to use AI to enable autonomous driving — technology that allows cars to effectively drive without humans at the helm. The business is aiming to license its self-driving technology to other firms, including retailers and automakers.
SoftBank also announced that it is in advanced talks to buy UK Chip manufacturer Graphcore for an undisclosed sum. We first reported a possible sale of Graphcore in February sale (See - Is UK chip designer Graphcore considering a sale?). The firm has struggled to capitalise on the AI demand and compete with Nvidia, and is seeking new funding to continue operating as revenue has halved and losses increased.
Such investment in the UK is certainly a boon for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has been seeking to transform the UK into a world leading location for AI development and innovation. However, the investment still pales in comparison to the multiple billions of dollars pouring into building AI foundation models, infrastructure and software, much of which still predominately sits in the United States. Only yesterday President Biden announced a $3.3bn investment by Microsoft to build a new artificial intelligence (AI) datacenter in Wisconsin.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 10:00
First quarter results from Rackspace show the firm continuing its turnaround journey with a few positive notes.
However, while key financial data (revenue, operating profit and EPS) “exceeded the high-end of guidance”, according to CEO, Amar Maletira, the figures are still a bit ouchy. Revenue was down 9.0% to $691m. The firm operates two business units, Private Cloud and Public Cloud. The former saw revenue slump 15.0% over the comparable period last year, while Public Cloud was down 5.0%. Non-GAAP operating profit was $16m, down 68% on last year.
Rackspace did, however, complete its debt refinancing, giving it “ample” liquidity and “runway for our turnaround”. The plan this year is to set the firm up for a return to consistent growth and profits.
In the last full financial year, Rackspace dipped 5.0%. Last night, it issued guidance for Q2 suggesting revenue will be in the $668-$678m range. Non-GAAP operating profit is expected to hit $20-$22m.
Posted by: Kate Hanaghan at 09:50
Tags: results
Aliter Capital LLP has acquired Essex-based Bates IT as part of its buy-and-build strategy that aims to create a leading UK critical network infrastructure services provider.
Bates has a history stretching back over 80 years, including providing IT services and software solutions for the last 25 years. It currently provides ICT support, networking solutions, and managed services across the public and private sectors with a particular strength in the health sector.
Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it was completed using capital from Aliter Capital II, a £134m fund that was launched after Aliter completed fundraising in December 2022. The launch of Aliter Capital II followed Aliter's maiden £92m fund (Aliter Capital I), which was launched in 2017 and closed 21 transactions.
This is the second investment to be completed under Aliter Capital II after it acquired ITM Communications (ITM) as its buy-and-build platform in January 2023. Simon Fieldhouse, who was appointed as ITM's Group CEO in October 2023, will now work with Bates IT's principal shareholders and directors, Barry Fuller and Christopher Fuller, to pursue both acquisitive and organic growth.
The Bates acquisition will provide the deep sector knowledge to support ITM's plan to develop a specialist healthcare practice within the business. With Aliter's backing, it should enable the business to expand outside of its current South and South East of England base and establish a national footprint.
Aliter is actively looking to acquire complementary businesses as bolt-ons to ITM, and TechMarketView will be following its progress.
Posted by: Dale Peters at 09:38
Tags: nhs acquisition infrastructure healthcare IT+services Network
Leatherhead-headquartered Bytes Technology Group (BTG) has appointed Sam Mudd as CEO. The FTSE 250 firm has also appointed two independent NEDs to the Board.
For the past decade, Mudd has been MD of the Phoenix Software business, which was acquired by Bytes in 2017. She has been on the BTG Board as an Executive Director since July 2023, and has served as interim CEO of BTG since February 2024.
It’s been a difficult period of the firm following the resignation of former CEO, Neil Murphy. In February, Murphy made a shock exit from the company following four years at the top. He resigned with immediate effect after revealing previously undisclosed share trades (totalling c.£3m in 100+ transactions across near three-year period) to the Board. Bytes’ shares were hit hard at the time.
Today the firm said it expects to have concluded the investigation into Murhpy's actions ahead of its preliminary results announcement (date tbc) and plans to update the market on its findings “as applicable”. In March, we received a full year update on the firm’s performance.
Today’s new CEO announcement is an incredibly positive step forward. Mudd is uniquely positioned to take on the role and has the right credentials to drive the company forward. We wish her every success in this new chapter.
Posted by: Kate Hanaghan at 09:35
Tags: people CEO
Wind the clock back to FY22 and Business Process Operations come AI/Data/Analytics specialist Genpact was posting consistently strong growth (see here), lifted on demand for data services. FY23 was much tougher for the business where demand for data/tech/AI that was already subdued in the first half of the year, went into reverse in the third quarter. This saw growth slow to just 2% in FY2023 (see here).
Q1 2024 results were out yesterday, and they show a slightly improving picture with total revenue growing 4% YoY to $1.13bn with the Digital Operations business up 5% and Data-Tech-AI (now 46% of the total) revenue up 3%. Future growth of the business depends on getting this “New” segment firing again, and the exec team had been restructured to support that. Adjusted operating profit was $182m, up 2% YoY, with a corresponding margin of 16.1%.
Genpact is currently transitioning from one era to another with long term CEO “Tiger" Tyagarajan retiring and handing over the reins to Balkrishan "BK" Kalra, the firm’s Financial Services and Consumer and Healthcare lead earlier this year. The business has also been pivoting from ‘old school’ lift and shift operations towards more transformation-led project work at a time when market demand has softened. Whilst the strategic direction is the right one for the long term, it's clearly going to take more time to get Genpact firing on all cylinders again.
Looking forward, Genpact expects full year revenue to fall between $4.59bn to $4.63bn or growth of approx. 2.5% to 3.5% as reported, or 2.7% to 3.7% in constant currency, which would show slight improvement on FY 2023.
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 08:44
Version 1 has announced new appointments to its leadership team, with Louise Lahiff taking the role of Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Patrick Cooney joining as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
Lahiff brings a decade of experience within the company to her new role. She previously served as Director of Strategy, People & Planning and in 2022, she became the first woman to join the board of Version 1's software entity. As COO, Lahiff will oversee the delivery functions across the UK, Ireland, India, and the USA.
Joining Lahiff in the executive team is Patrick Cooney, who spent nine years as Europe CFO at Kerry Group. In his new role, Cooney will be responsible for Version 1's growth strategy, which includes both M&A activity and expanding into new markets. He is taking over from Andrew Langford, who is retiring after serving as CFO since 2017.
Version 1 has recently acquired Farsight Consulting and secured significant new contracts, such as with National Highways. With these new appointments playing a critical role in the company's ambitious growth plans, we expect to see more M&A activity and strategic partnerships from Version 1 in the near future.
Posted by: Dale Peters at 15:49
Tags: appointments digital+transformation
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has announced funding for keystone projects across healthcare, law enforcement and law as part of its Responsible AI UK (RAI UK) programme.
The programme aims to support consortia-led research projects to ensure AI technologies are designed, deployed and used responsibly within societies. The majority of the funding (£10.5m) forms part of the £31m programme, which is led from the University of Southampton and backed by UKRI, through the UKRI Technology Missions Fund and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). UKRI has also committed an additional £4m to support these projects.
The PROBabLE Futures (Probabilistic AI Systems in Law Enforcement Futures) project was one of the beneficiaries of this round of funding. The 4-year interdisciplinary project, which secured funding of £3.4m, is seeking to develop a framework to understand the implications of uncertainty and to build confidence in future Probabilistic AI in law enforcement. The project is led by Northumbria University in partnership with the Universities of Northampton, Cambridge, and Aberdeen, law enforcement partners, technology suppliers, third-sector and academic partners.
Funding has also been provided to a project designed to address sociotechnical limitations of large language models (LLMs) in healthcare and law. Led by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the project secured £4.4m to help harness the potential of LLMs for improving efficiency and effectiveness in these fields, while mitigating the risks of deploying poorly understood systems, e.g. biases, privacy leaks, and lack of explainability. QMUL is collaborating with Accenture, Bloomberg, Canon Medical, Microsoft, the NHS and a range of service users on the project.
The third investment is for the Glasgow University-led Participatory Harm Auditing Workbenches and Methodologies (PHAWM) project. It secured £3.5m of funding to work in partnership with researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Sheffield, Stirling, Strathclyde, York and King's College London, as well as 23 other partner organisations, to help pioneer participatory AI auditing. This approach will see non-experts, including regulators, end-users and those likely to be affected by AI-based decisions, play a role in ensuring that AI systems provide fair and reliable outputs.
Additional funding through the UKRI Technology Missions Fund was awarded to the Digital Good Network, The Alan Turing Institute and the Ada Lovelace Institute to ensure that public voices are attended to in AI research, development and policy, and to The Productivity Institute to gain insights on how the uptake of responsible AI can be encouraged through incentive structures, business models and regulatory frameworks.
These are important projects that should provide vital data to support the responsible application of AI in critical services. The rush to achieve much-needed productivity gains through the application of new technology needs to be tempered with a sound knowledge of the implications it may have on individuals, industry and the wider society.
Posted by: Dale Peters at 10:12
Tags: nhs funding police health government AI lawtech ethics public+safety bias
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