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This is our last HotViews before the Christmas break.
We’ve introduced our Theme for 2014 – Race for Change and everyone of our Research Directors have given their Predictions for their respective streams.
But, for this final post of 2013, maybe I can be allowed to make my own predictions for 2014.
The UK economy is really set on a growth trajectory and I fully expect current forecasts to be exceeded. That will put extreme pressure on the BoE to raise interest rates and I expect an unholy row to breakout about political pressure NOT to raise those rates this side of the May 2015 General Election. Although, as I keep warning everyone I am not a stock-picker, I expect the FTSE100 to end 2014 with a ‘double- digit’ gain and I expect tech stocks to outperform.
UKIP will make major gains in the European Elections in May 14 and Scotland will vote to remain part of the UK in Sept 14 even though a similar poll in England might vote for separation by a large margin! General Election fever will grip the UK. For my prediction on that, wait for Dec 2014!
Diversity of Performance will be extreme. I can think of several quoted UK SITS stocks that I expect to go the way of 2e2. Any regular HotViews reader should know the list of possible candidates by now. Conversely there will be some great performers – we suggest in particular amongst those with dedicated (ie ‘no baggage’) Enterprise Cloud offerings and in the quasi-consumer space (social media, games, e-commerce etc). BTW – ‘Great performance’ now seems to mean revenue growth NOT profits. We’ve warned you on this many times before.
Last year I was asked to vote for my ‘Stock for 2013’ and I answered Amazon. Good answer as they are up 60% YTD. Asked the same question, I would give the same answer for 2014…and beyond. Google (also up over 50% YTD) and FaceBook (doubled since its 2013 low) will clearly benefit from a rebound in the economy and the continued shift to advertising online.
I also expect a very buoyant UK IPO market with several whoppers. Hurrah! Our Little British Battlers will ‘punch above their weight’. Hurrah! Indeed we expect several of our LBBs to feature in our ‘corporate news’ stories in 2014. Although still unlikely, an LBB IPO would be real cause for celebration!
I think many of the ‘old guard’ global large tech players will continue to have a difficult time in terms of revenue growth. HP, Microsoft, Intel etc will struggle. I think we’ll finally see some real fireworks erupt re: HP/Autonomy with law suits flying in the opposite direction. Indeed, many of the lead players will ‘lose’ their CEOs in 2014. I’d like to see Mike Lawrie take on the Microsoft CEO role. Just sincerely hope it’s not Stephen Elop.
2014 will be the start of the Era of Wearable Computing and I fully expect (hope!) Apple will be in the vanguard. Everyone will get involved and the only issue will be whether you have enough body area to wear them all. Perhaps we’ll resort to implants! Of course, the winner will be the ‘one device that does it all’. A generation that has done without a watch will find the ‘wristband’ really trendy – again. But 2014 will also be the start of the Era of Driveables. I can really see the logic of self-driving cars now – certainly ones that stop you crashing into cyclists (or anything else come to that). Even the Era of Flyables. Drones for commercial use are not science fiction anymore.
All in all, I think we are set for an exciting and positive 2014. And that’s been a rare outlook since 1999.
Posted by Richard Holway at '10:13'
Business process management (BPM) is seeing an increase in adoption in the UK business process services (BPS) market as suppliers attempt to respond more quickly and efficiently to clients’ process challenges.
IT/BPS providers like IBM, Accenture, Cognizant, Wipro and TCS are actively delivering BPM software and services as part of consultative engagements with their customers, often leading onto to broader change programmes.
BPM is of growing importance to BPS providers as they attempt to compete against pure software/SaaS alternatives available to end users that can be rapidly deployed and used to automate processes. A big problem however is that there are a lot of misconceptions about what ‘business process management’, or BPM actually is, which has the potential to cause unnecessary confusion and slow adoption.
Subscribers to TechMarketView's BusinessProcessViews research service can read the analysis and implications here.
Posted by John O'Brien at '08:23' - Tagged: bpo bps bpm
The pace of change impacting the business process services (BPS) market is set to accelerate even faster in 2014. Platform-led BP services are becoming widely adopted across many sectors, and cloud-sourced Business Process as-a-Service (BPaas) is maturing. And new technologies and services that target both consumer demands and business process requirements are coming on stream. Suppliers need to adapt, but challenges abound, such as how to develop outcome-based pricing models that really work, and how to manage new flexible on-demand BPS models so that suppliers can actually make money from them.
Nowhere is this 'race for change' more frenetic than around social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC). Some BPS suppliers are already actively investing, but we expect this to accelerate. New technology and software divisions are being established to drive investments in process platforms and partnerships in consumer mobile apps. The key here to this is gathering intelligence around business processes and behaviours to drive process efficiencies and better customer service outcomes.
But investment on the one hand has to be balanced by the usual demands for cost reduction on the other. In the public sector supplier transparency and accountability are now taking centre stage. This will make margin growth a real challenge in 2014. Efficiency innovations will be critical to keep moving in the right direction. So we expect to see more standardisation around business process platforms and shared services, as well as investments in new process automation technologies across the board.
Despite the challenges, we remain very optimistic about the prospects for the UK BPS market in 2014 (see UK BPS Market Size and Forecasts, 2013):
Business process automation (BPA) adoption will increase
We expect BPS providers to accelerate partnering and M&A with business process automation (BPA) enablers - typically SaaS providers that automate a discrete sub-process activity, as diverse as processing correct delivery order information, or unstructured documents like complaints, or even on-boarding customers to a new contract. Automating these activities takes human involvement out, and aims to reduce both error rates and cost. Some big BPS names are already engaging BPA providers on exclusive new deals. This could leave suppliers less prepared to engage becoming increasingly uncompetitive and unable to respond to demands for continual cost/service improvement.
Tough year for Government BPS suppliers
2014 is going to be a tough year for the big Government BPS players, as they respond to the demand for greater openness and transparency with UK Government. The four biggest central government players, Capita, Serco, Atos and G4S, have all agreed to greater oversight of their accounting practices, following recent scandals recent scandals involving Serco and G4S. But this will require more investment by suppliers in contract governance, audits and ethics and code of conduct assessments. It will also mean reviewing existing deals and being prepared to take further haircuts if costs are deemed too high. The ones that embrace transparency could however stand to benefit greatly as a new era of Government partners emerge.
Refocus on ‘enabling’ business outcomes
Outcome-based BPS has so far proved difficult to get right (see Outcome-based BPS – what’s it all about?). In 2014, we expect suppliers to take a step back and refocus on what it really means for the end customer, and how it can be more pragmatically embedded within the contract to ensure everyone is pleased with the outcome. We think the goalposts have been set too high, particularly in ‘payment by results’ deals in the public sector where suppliers only get paid if they meet defined outcomes. Providers need to consider focusing on definable metrics that can be measured by both sides – such as volumes of work done to a set level of quality, or number of transactions successfully completed. These can enable a business outcome, which is surely what suppliers are actually trying to achieve.
BPaaS morphing to subscription model
Business Process as-a-Service (BPaaS) as a model for cloud-based process provisioning, is maturing as a concept and technology. However just like the SaaS space, suppliers are struggling to make it financially viable as an on-demand service. We think 2014 will see a push back by suppliers on some of this on-demand approach, and seek a return to subscription pricing that includes access to the cloud-based process platform and third party processing for a minimum term subscription. It will be up to the supplier how they price this packaged offering. But the model begins to shift towards something more like a cloud-sourced managed business process service, than a pay-per-use utility. This will have implications for true on-demand providers, who may need to adapt to survive.
‘Apps’ and BPS converge
We expect 2014 to be the year that some of these early SMAC investments in the BPS market start to gain wider adoption. In particular we see mobile ‘apps’ that target processing opportunities in general insurance, banking and retail being a hot area since these tend to engage directly with the consumer. Organisations need help in driving business through these new channels, and BPS providers will be in a strong position, offering back and front office services to manage these volumes. But it is early days, and so these new apps need to be enterprise grade quality, capable of managing significant volumes of processing to make the investment of time and effort worthwhile on both sides. Keeping ahead of the game will be the next challenge as new requirements and opportunities flood in.
Subscribers to our BusinessProcessViews research stream will be able to read the full analysis of our Predictions in the New Year.
Posted by John O'Brien at '08:32' - Tagged: bpo bps
Activity in the Enterprise Software & Application Services (ESAS) sector will revolve intensively around information in 2014 as organisations act on the knowledge that they have to ‘use it or lose out’. The ability to monitor, capture, store, combine, manipulate, analyse, report, visualise and distribute data is core to the overall TechMarketView 2014 Race for Change theme whereby private businesses and public sector have to spot change faster, execute and extract value within an increasingly short half-life, then accelerate on to the next cycle.
That is why many application services suppliers are creating businesses within the business – dedicated digital units built around the high growth SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) areas where fast delivery and fast returns are prime requirements - and ‘legacy’ enterprise software vendors are scrabbling to modernise and extend their core products to cater for the faster operational tempo of their clients. All the while pacier competitors are slicing into revenue streams.
This is the background for our predictions for 2014:
The rise of the data-driven business: Aggregating, assimilating, sharing and acting on expanding, rapidly changing and sometimes transient data is the biggest challenge facing organisations. Smart automation, analytics and machine intelligence are the foundations for a shift from qualitative to quantitative decision making, whereby decisions are made and verified based on available data rather than intuition (there is always a place for intuition but it will apply at different stages of the decision lifecycle). With organisations under relentless pressure for faster, more consistent decision-making, greater productivity, a sharper competitive edge and increased profitability, enabling the data driven business will be a focus for both the buy and supply sides of the ESAS market. Suppliers need an extensive and coherent portfolio and skillset because the change requirements go beyond big data and analytics and drive demand for information and process management strategies, governance, privacy – and security.
Complexity will change the cloud services supply channel: The many cloud platforms and even more numerous cloud-based applications is creating complexity from a cost, management and integration perspective so there will be a concerted drive towards aggregation, orchestration and brokerage around cloud services. This provides new opportunities for application services providers, who can use the opportunity to embed themselves as strategic providers, but will change the way cloud services are procured and paid for, and sever the direct relationship between SaaS providers and client. This will have cost implications (will orchestration allow providers to levy charges that can deliver profit and high margins – something that is missing in the SaaS space?) and may well lead to a bifurcation in the cloud services supply channel.
SaaS and Enterprise App Store commercial models will come under greater scrutiny: With more questions being asked about the lack of bottom line rewards, the question of the viability of the SaaS commercial model based on current pricing levels is set to come to a head. It will be acerbated by fevered growth in enterprise app stores and the struggle to monitise this emerging route to market. Combine that with growing maturity and the need to push further into the back office, which will moderate SaaS growth, and 2014 could be the year when SaaS pure-plays have to reset expectations.
Enterprise investment shifts to the digital front office: Organisations will prioritise their spending around the digital front office, user experience, customer engagement and omni-channel enablement, driven by priorities set by Chief Marketing Officers and Line Of Business managers who are not just influencers but are now significant budget holders. Suppliers need to win the hearts and budgets of these new types of buyers.
Smartening up mobile apps: Smart mobile enterprise apps that exploit the capabilities of the mobile device, to process information in the background to enable real-time location and context-based user interactions for example, are poised for a breakthrough. Their cue is using information to improve the quality and appropriateness of the mobile experience. And with that we’re back to where we started – information at the core.
Posted by Angela Eager at '09:34' - Tagged: software predictions applications
Today, TechMarketView’s research stream focused on the supply of Software and IT Services to the UK Financial Services industry, FinancialServicesViews, publishes its flagship Supplier Landscape report.
This report, complementing the Market Trends and Forecasts report published in November, profiles the key vendors into the UK Financial Services sector, across the SITS market as a whole and in the individual areas of Enterprise Software, Infrastructure Services, Applications Services and Business Process Services.
The ecosystem of suppliers to the sector is extremely large, but the ten largest suppliers together generate around £4.4bn of revenue, over 40% of the sector total. These top suppliers are a diverse group, including outsourcing specialists, large infrastructure providers, systems integrators, a software giant, three India-headquartered companies and a telco.
Financial Services customers are now moving to shore up their competitiveness and build market position in the face of new competition and more exacting demands from their increasingly fickle customer base. The larger customers will look to their major suppliers for higher levels of business consulting, extensive domain expertise and best-in-class delivery capability. This report details these new requirements and highlights the implications for the companies supplying this important and growing sector.
As the market grows and as Financial Services companies increasingly rely upon their vendors, there will be many opportunities to build revenue and market share. 2014 promises to be an exciting year for the sector and we hope that this report will help our subscribers to navigate it successfully.
In addition to the Supplier Landscape report, subscribers to FinancialServicesViews will receive our Market Trends and Forecasts reports as well as a series of notes focussed on key sector topics. To subscribe, or to find out more, please look at our FinancialServicesViews web page, or contact Deb Seth of TechMarketView Client Services
Posted by Peter Roe at '08:32'
We recently caught up with Memset CEO and co-founder, Kate Craig-Wood, at the company’s new offices. The Surrey-based cloud services and hosting firm (primary services are managed hosting, dedicated servers, IaaS, security and monitoring) has just relocated to gain extra space for more staff and a new secure data centre facility, which is set to go live in January 2014. With a current annual run rate of £4.7m, Memset is disproportionately well known in the IT industry. This is largely on the back of work by Craig-Wood who is an entrepreneur, supreme networker and serious techie all in one.
Subscribers can read more about what we learned and just how Memset’s business with UK government is shaping up. See: Memset: On a government growth curve.
If you are not currently a TechMarketView subscriber and would like to start the New Year with access to our ever-popular InfrastructureViews research stream, please contact Deb Seth.
Posted by Kate Hanaghan at '09:24' - Tagged: cloud hosting mid-market
The UK local government SITS supplier landscape remains dominated by IT and business services players benefitting from the steady flow of revenues attributable to multimillion pound and multi-service line (IT services and BPO) contracts signed over the last decade. However, the fortunes of some of these suppliers have deteriorated significantly in the past couple of years both through the effect of market forces and from self-inflicted wounds.
Our analysis of the UK local government supplier software and IT services (SITS) supplier landscape highlights continued changes in buying behaviour and supplier strategies which have already changed the market pecking order and which we expect to continue to affect the leader board in future years.
Subscribers to TechMarketView’s PublicSectorViews research stream can read our analysis in the latest report: UK local government SITS supplier landscape 2013-14. If you are not yet a subscriber, Deb Seth would be delighted to hear from you.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '09:13' - Tagged: publicsector localgovernment suppliers
Eligible TechMarketView subscription service clients can now download Little British Battlers – The Third Wave, the third report in our Little British Battler series.
This report provides concise profiles and opinion on the twelve companies that participated in our third Little British Battler day in November 2013:
Each company is in its own way punching above its weight in its chosen markets and may present interesting partnering opportunities for larger players.
If you are not yet a TechMarketView subscription service client, Deb Seth will be happy to point the way.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '07:53' - Tagged: lbb
TechMarketView’s theme for 2014, “Race for Change” is absolutely spot on for the Financial Services sector. Over the past five years, Financial Services companies have been pre-occupied with slashing costs and reacting to regulatory changes. Now they are waking up to a new reality; that the competitive landscape has changed significantly and that they have to transform the way they operate and how they interact with their customers. Their customers’ expectations have changed; they want to use their smartphones for banking, they use Twitter to complain and they want the best service and the best deal, regardless of supplier. At the same time, a new breed of competitor has emerged; edgy, technology savvy and focused, taking market share and showing the older-established companies a clean pair of heels in terms of innovation, agility and customer acquisition. As a consequence, the larger companies, who are also the UK’s biggest spenders on IT now realise that they are already behind in this important Race for Change.
This need for change, and the size of the task, underpins our forecast that IT spending in this sector will grow faster than anywhere else in the UK market. FinancialServicesViews subscribers can see our detailed sector view in our Market Trends and Forecasts report. With this background and our positive view of growth, our predictions for 2014 are as follows;
Larger Financial Services companies will continue to be handicapped by their legacy position and systems: particularly as the tsunami of regulatory changes continues. Large proportions of available budget will be directed towards ensuring compliance – and not to the increasingly pressing problem of remaining competitive. Here, incumbent vendors, with track record and a good knowledge of existing systems, will remain in a strong position.
Financial Services companies will increasingly concentrate on their core businesses: leaving more of their IT to scale-advantaged vendors. This will lead to new outsource contracts and deals like the recent IBM/Dexia agreement, where IBM has taken on the activities of this Franco-Belgian bank’s IT department.
Greater use of industry-wide utilities by Financial Services companies to reduce costs, particularly when they are run by capable, well-capitalised and independent providers. This presents substantial opportunity for vendors with innovative business models, deep pockets and broad capabilities.
Mobile systems generating growth. Mobile channels will generate most of the growth in payments and banking, providing a route for new competitors to establish market positions. Incumbent companies will have to invest in effective and customer-friendly mobile propositions to retain market share. Demands on vendors will be onerous, as mobile systems will have to integrate seamlessly with other channels, provide a holistic customer experience and be secure (a particular concern as cyber-criminals turn their attention to this increasingly lucrative opportunity). Social Media and Analytics will also move more into the mainstream across the sector.
Cloud Services will underpin both cost reduction and growth strategies across the sector. Private cloud infrastructures will predominate but will increasingly be combined with public cloud for non-mission critical applications. Cloud infrastructure will be used to supplement core systems as they cope with additional volumes, Big Data applications and the extra demands placed on systems as a result of multiple channels to market. Customers will require a clear long-term infrastructure strategy, showing how cloud can inter-work with existing systems.
Sector consolidation will also be a theme for 2014. Customers will reduce their lists of vendors to reduce costs. Larger suppliers will be active purchasers of smaller companies to acquire niche skills and meet the diverse needs of key customers, especially where the Financial Services companies themselves have reduced their own IT and innovation teams. Also watch out for consolidation in the sector, as well-capitalised players buy smaller firms in a drive to buy share and coverage.
As Financial Services customers increasingly rely on their vendors for advice, innovation and cost reduction, successful vendors will need to offer business consulting skills, deep domain expertise and best-in-class delivery. Therefore, to succeed in the Race for Change in the Financial Services sector, many vendors will have to transform themselves. 2014 promises to be a very interesting year!
Posted by Peter Roe at '19:57'
The latest edition of TechMarketView OffshoreViews pick up on the analysis we published earlier this year on the infrastructure services of the major India-centric suppliers (see Have the India-centric suppliers come of age?) and how one player in particular has broken away from the pack.
As usual we also update our estimates for the UK revenues of the key Indian suppliers as we look at the increasing diversity of performance among the companies both here in the UK and worldwide.
Plus there’s our regular tabular summary of the key performance metrics of the major players.
All this and more in an easily digestible four pages. Eligible TechMarketView subscription service clients can partake of this feast by clicking this link. Others must watch in envy.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '08:14' - Tagged: offshore
The undeniable move towards the cloud from the traditional ‘old world’ of IT outsourcing will be one of the most influential factors for supplier revenue, margin and share price performance in 2014. Infrastructure suppliers are jostling for position (as either cloud ‘builders’ or cloud aggregators), making substantial investments in data centre assets and technologies, tools and orchestration platforms.
However, the Race for Change in infrastructure services is more like the 400m hurdles than the 100m sprint. Pace is of course important, but it is not just about who is fastest out of the blocks. Buyers have dabbled with cloud and (largely) understand its potential. They now face the enormous challenge of trying to differentiate the many options for cloud infrastructure services on the market. Not only that, but they must try to understand how well their entire range of requirements (across ITO, hosting, private cloud, public cloud and so on) can be met. In 2014 suppliers must therefore take the time to refine their offerings and clarify their positioning and differentiation.
Here are some of our key predictions for 2014:
The increasing shift to hybrid cloud environments will drive the requirement for supplier orchestration and automation capabilities: We see an intensifying Race for Change around these platforms as suppliers invest and/or acquire to create flexibility and control for customers, and differentiation versus other suppliers. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) on its own will not be enough to ensure customers will stick by a supplier, especially where Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a suitable alternative. SITS suppliers will need to provide both public and private cloud environments (their own or partner-owned), that can be cleverly managed alongside existing legacy systems.
The flow of revenue through the G-Cloud framework will build steadily: The running total as of November 2013 was £64m, which is a very small drop in the ocean versus the total UK SITS market. Nonetheless, we believe the question suppliers need to be asking themselves is not “should we be on it?” but “what should we put on it?”. Government buyers are moving away from traditionally structured outsourcing deals (see more on this here: Race for change 2014: UK public sector predictions), and cloud services will without doubt play a key role in this shift.
The requirement for CIOs to provide a high-performance working environment will accelerate in 2014: Buyers are looking for innovative ways to create a more satisfying and effective workplace experience for their users. This of course ties in with the consumerisation of IT trend and employee demand for choice and quality of devices and access. A couple of years ago the buzz phrase was BYOD – but this is only part of the solution. Devices were the starting point; now end users want vastly improved functionality – for example, mobile access to core company data or infinitely improved analytics of customer buying patterns. CIOs are under pressure to help staff become more productive and the enterprise more competitive.
Private Equity firms will start to consider selling their data centre services investments: Within the next year or so, we think it likely that mid-sized cloud and hosting firms will come up for sale. Over the years, investors have backed their numerous acquisitions, and there are now many examples of financially strong, decently-scaled PE-backed entities (see Mid-market Data Centre Services: Opportunities and Competitors for examples and analysis). With good market growth rates in hosting and cloud - and interest from parties looking to expand capabilities and customers - now might feel like a good time for backers to reap the rewards for their hard work.
The gap will widen between well run and poorly run infrastructure services firms: In markets where top line growth is difficult to achieve (read more about the infrastructure services market sub-sectors here: Infrastructure Services Market Trends and Forecasts 2013), weaker operational models will be hit further in 2014. Those that are able to grow margin (e.g. IBM and Computacenter this year) have done so because they have been able to sign the right deals (in terms of margin and/or growth potential) and run those deals in a cost efficient way. Furthermore, poor cloud commercial and investment models will be also start to be exposed; in the worse cases suppliers will be unable to achieve a return on investment and/or service levels will be dissatisfactory.
Posted by Kate Hanaghan at '17:12' - Tagged: predictions
There are two key ‘events’ that will have the potential to impact the UK public sector SITS market in 2014. The first is the looming General Election in May 2015. And the second is a peak in the retendering of several major long-running ICT contracts across central government (in 2014/15).
The first (commonly referred to as the ‘Purdah’ or ‘pre-election period’ effect) has the potential to slow decision making down pending the possible introduction of a new Government with new policies and a new strategy and direction, particularly towards the end of 2014. The second has the potential to speed up change, as the Cabinet Office, as well as the departments and agencies, take advantage of the end of existing commercial relationships to embark on new approach to ICT procurement, implementation and management. The question is which will win out?
It is our view that, regardless of the outcome of the General Election, any Government will need to remain committed to cutting the deficit. As such we don’t expect a let-up in the determination of the Cabinet Office to radically shakeup the ICT landscape. Indeed recent public sector notices highlight a drive to speed up decision-making and associated procurements in order to build up momentum between now and the end of this Parliament (see More procurements supporting Cabinet Office aims):
A presumption against contract extensions will remain: As we approach the end of Parliament, the Cabinet Office will be even more determined to bring an end to long-running ICT outsourcing agreements as soon as contractually possible. It is true that, in some cases, departments have had to extend contracts due to the lack of departmental readiness to move forward with a new commercial model. However, our view is that we are now seeing earlier intervention by the Cabinet Office; and that will result in extensions being the exception rather than the rule.
‘Traditional’ outsourcing models will become rarer: As ‘old’ contracts are re-tendered in a new form, the SIAM/Tower model continues to be the favoured option for larger departments and agencies. Any contracts signed will be shorter and more flexible. But we are also seeing alternative contracting arrangements gaining popularity, for example, Joint Ventures, ‘Mutuals’ or ‘right-sourcing’ whereby the internal IT department is retained but supported by external partners. Suppliers and clients will continue to seek the right balance when it comes to the sharing of risk and reward. No Government will want to leave the legacy of an ill-thought out mega outsourcing deal.
Increased collaboration and shared services: The drivers, both internal and external, to increased organisational collaboration and sharing of services are increasing. Budgetary pressures mean that all options are being considered. And the Chancellor’s announcement of funds directed towards collaborative projects around health & social care and the ‘Troubled Families’ programme have prompted renewed activity. External factors such as improved network connectivity and data security solutions are removing some barriers.
Changes will drive requirement for modern solutions/SMEs: Much of the change in Government, is, and will continue to be, about taking advantage of advances in technology while continuing to deal with massive legacy systems. It will be impossible to move away from legacy systems overnight but at the same time, the team at the Cabinet Office are keen to modernise to drive down costs and better public services. This will continue to drive the desire to work with SMEs, which are seen as agile and flexible, particularly in ‘new technology’ areas such as data analytics. It will also drive the adoption of open standards and open source, to allow easier integration of new technologies into the architecture.
Relations will start to thaw between Cabinet Office and the big SIs. This is part hope, part prediction. The ‘race for change’ is clearly visible in UK Government. In our view suppliers big and small will have a part to play; the Cabinet Office is beginning to accept that, and as such, our hope is that 2014 will be the year when the relationship matures to a level Government openly accepts the role that larger players can play, and suppliers become as open and transparent as possible in their dealings with Government clients.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '06:00' - Tagged: publicsector predictions
Race for Change is TechMarketView’s theme for 2014. Richard Holway introduces the theme in the Race for Change post below. This will be taken up in the Predictions from the Research Directors for each of our streams which will be published separately in HotViews over the next week.
Longer versions of our Predictions will be made available to our research subscribers early in the New Year.
Enjoy!
Posted by HotViews Editor at '20:40'
When you look back now on the technological developments of the past, it seems amazing how long they lasted until they were replaced by ‘something completely different’. The printing press, the gramophone record, the telephone all lasted 100 years or more. In computing, mainframes like the IBM S/360 or minis like the HP 3000 or DEC PDP11 had decades to repay their investment. Then PCs ruled pretty much supreme for in excess of 20 years.
But a Pace of Change that once could be measured in decades is now down to just a few years and has every sign of getting even faster.
In 2003 I gave my first speech entitled “2020 Vision”. 2020 is just seven years away now. Seven years back, in 2006, there was no iPhone - Nokia and Blackberry ruled. There was no iPad so PCs and Microsoft still ruled. There was no FaceBook available outside of Harvard and Twitter had just been invented. Streaming of anything was pretty much unknown. ‘Cloud’ as a term would not have been recognised. There were no Indian HQed companies anywhere near the Top Twenty SITS suppliers to the UK market. I could go on…
One thing is for sure. Most of the things and many of the lead companies we will be reporting on in 2020 are unknowns today.
There are both huge threats and huge opportunities ahead because of this.
The threat is mostly to the established companies – both tech suppliers and their users alike. Clients – both enterprises and consumers – will want to move to the latest technology almost as soon as it is available. If you do not have that in your offerings, those customers will desert you. It happened to leaders like HP and Microsoft when tablets came along. It happened to the likes of SAP and Oracle when cloud based enterprise solutions came along from the likes of Salesforce.com and Workday. It certainly happened to Nokia and Blackberry when smarter smartphones came along. But it also happened to enterprise users too. Morrisons was far too slow to adapt to online grocery shopping and is paying the price. Some companies like HMV, Blockbuster, Jessops etc paid the ultimate price in their failure to adapt in the right time scale. At the top of the enterprise chain, banks have to adapt extremely quickly to customers requirements to, for example, do all aspects of their banking on the very latest smartphone model. Same applies to HMGovt to its ‘user base’ that cannot understand why there isn’t an App for self assessment.
The opportunity is, of course, the reverse. New companies without baggage can develop new products both quickly and now at a surprisingly low cost. They can disrupt established markets very quickly. Indeed, one of the reasons why there is so much optimism about the UK developing into a major new global tech force might well be because it now doesn’t have many major established global players with associated baggage! It’s the new upstarts around Tech City and the 30+ other tech hubs in the UK that could well benefit from this accelerating rate of change.
Our view is that this Race for Change will be a major factor across every sector that TechMarketView analyses. It will affect every tech business from the largest to the smallest – and their customers too. Companies have to adjust and bring in operating practices that allow both fast recognisition and implementation of change. This applies at all levels. One CIO told me recently that his CFO was wanting software development costs written off over 10 years. The CIO said that most of the things they were working on would be unlikely to last a year before having to be replaced because of technological change.
Ignoring it really is not an option any more. If you do, some upstart really will ‘eat your lunch’. And, you really don’t have a lot of time to put your house in order. I could say if you don’t recognise that already, then you are probably doomed anyway.
Posted by Richard Holway at '20:27'
We look towards the heavens in the latest edition of IndustryViews Venture Capital - our quarterly review of the start-up and venture capital side of the UK software and IT services market - with a special focus on ‘angel’ investing.
We have an interview with George Whitehead who, besides his ‘day job’ as Venture Partner Manager at Octopus Investments, is also chairman of The Angel CoFund, the investment vehicle that pretty much does what it says on the tin!
We also met up with Tim de Vere Green, founder of Origin Capital, one of a rare breed of full-time professional angel investors. This is indeed his day job!
Then it’s back down to earth as we go north of the border (well, figuratively, anyway) to meet Stuart Paterson, Partner at Scottish Equity Partners, the prolific Glasgow-based venture capital and growth equity fund which has spread its munificence to London and beyond.
And as usual we have the key stats on UK VC tech investment and highlight some of the more interesting deals.
How we cram all this into just five pages is a miracle of modern research for the sole delectation of eligible TechMarketView subscription service clients who follow this link!
Posted by HotViews Editor at '22:41'
As we highlighted in UKHotviews this morning - see HP and Norfolk County Council: big data ambitions - HP has won a £26m, five-year, contact with Norfolk County Council to support its Digital Norfolk Ambition (DNA) programme. HP and its partners will provide desktop, data centre and collaboration infrastructure enabling better ways of working across Norfolk. Following the announcement of the contract, Georgina O'Toole spoke in detail to Norfolk CIO Tom Baker and HP Enterprise Services Director of Strategy, Civil Government, James Johns, about the deal.
In this latest UKHotViewsExtra article from the PublicSectorViews team, we analyse the contract, the implications for Norfolk County Council and HP, and the implications for use of big data across central and local government. Subscribers can access the note here. If you cannot gain access please contact Deb Seth for more details.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '12:35' - Tagged: publicsector localgovernment contract bigdata
Three and a half years ago the Chancellor George Osborne set out his long-term economic plan in the Emergency Budget. One of the three strands of the plan focused on addressing the problem of unreformed public services. Today’s Autumn Statement highlights how that endeavour is ongoing, and in particular emphasises that the Government commits to “fix the roof when the sun is shining”.
Departments are currently keeping well within their budgets, further cuts are in the plan for some - but not all - public sector orgaisations, and budgets have been allocated to focus attention on certain key issues. In UKHotViewsExtra Georgina O'Toole analyses today's statement and highlights the key takeaways for SITS suppliers to the public sector market. Subscribers can read the article now, everyone else should contact Deb Seth to gain access.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '17:49' - Tagged: publicsector centralgovernment localgovernment strategy policy
We are once again looking to recruit an analyst to join the ever-expanding TechMarketView research team.
The ideal candidate will have at least three years’ experience researching the UK IT industry; knowledge of the UK public sector market would be a distinct advantage. Your background could be in market intelligence in an IT supplier or as a tech journalist – or of course as an industry analyst.
You must have proven skills communicating an informed opinion based on your research, both in writing and face to face. Our extensive client list includes top executives in the IT industry, government officials and investors. We hold a privileged position with many of our clients as advisors as much as analysts.
This is a very demanding but highly stimulating role. You must be self-motivated, confident, disciplined, and very deadline-focused. We all work from our own homes but this is not a ‘work at home’ job; you will be spending much of your time out in the market meeting clients, attending company briefings and talking to the media. This also means you should live within an hour or so's commute of central London.
The compensation is very competitive and there is plenty of opportunity for the right candidate to take on more responsibility if they prove their worth. But perhaps the most significant reward is the recognition you get from being part of the most respected name in the UK IT research industry.
If you think you might fit the bill, please email your CV to TechMarketView Managing Partner Anthony Miller.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '07:00'
After announcing impressive full year 2013 results (see Innovation Group breaks £200m revenue mark), we spoke with Andy Roberts, CEO, and Jane Hall, FD of The Innovation Group, to discuss the detail behind the numbers, and where the business is heading as it enters its new 2014 financial year.
TIG is in fact heading into 2014 in a very good position, with a clear focus, a strong balance sheet, and some real momentum.
TechMarketView Foundation Services subscribers can read the analysis and implications in UKHotViewsExtra here.
Posted by John O'Brien at '15:06' - Tagged: bps insurance
In FY12, Colt hit the significant milestone of returning to growth (in Euros) for the first time in seven years. However, management’s ambition doesn’t stop there. The objective is to achieve compound growth of mid-to-high single digits to 2017. To make this a reality, Colt will need to ensure its legacy products in voice and data can consistently grow – something that will be a significant challenge in today’s market. In IT services, there is an opportunity to grow strongly in cloud-delivered infrastructure services. However, Colt’s business here is currently small and our view is that it is not yet delivering the kind of growth Colt needs to justify the investments made to date.
In this CompanyViews research note (see The IT services piece in the Colt growth puzzle), we take a closer look at Colt’s cloud and IT services business. Available to subscribers of TechMarketViews’ Foundation Service and InfrastructureViews only. To gain access to research, please contact Deb Seth (dseth@techmarketview.com).
Posted by Kate Hanaghan at '09:42' - Tagged: research
October and November have proved to be as busy a time as ever for the analyst team at TechMarketView.
In InfrastructureViews, hot on the heels of her Infrastructure Services Market Trends and Forecasts 2013 report research director, Kate Hanaghan, went on to release Mid-market Data Centre Services: Opportunities and Competitors. In this popular report, Kate delves into this highly fragmented market, which consists of a large number of enterprises with different business and technology challenges and is not the single market sector it is often thought to be. In UKHotViewsExtra, Kate covers the story on SCC sets sights on 46% growth.
The PublicSectorViews team has also been busy, publishing four new reports. In Scottish Public Sector SITS Market: Trends & Opportunities research director, Georgina O’Toole and the team look into why this relatively small market has bold ambitions, while in Steria & SSCL: a pivotal deal Georgina looks more closely at the new joint venture with the UK Cabinet Office called Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL).
The analysts also caught up with Dell’s UK public sector team and were surprised to find a business that is outperforming the market in many areas. Find out why in Tola Sargeant’s research note: Dell surprises in UK public sector. And finally in Agilisys leverages Blenheim Chalcot relationship, Georgina analyses why Agilisys continues to grow despite an increasingly tough local government outsourcing market. Further to this the PubicSectorViews team also produced UKHotViewsExtra articles; Alliantist gains G-Cloud IL3 accreditation, US healthcare IT woes carry lessons for the UK and BT teams up to join health and care.
In ESASViews, research director Angela Eager, followed on from her two part Market Trends and Forecasts research on the Enterprise Software and Application Services market with the eagerly anticipated ESAS Supplier Landscape 2013/14 report. Then, in SAP Business ByDesign: direction and market impact, Angela looks into why Business by Design is changing form quite radically. For UKHotViewsExtra, Angela writes about Servicing the cloud SMB accountancy market and PE firm Advent International offers €1.17bn for UNIT4.
In BusinessProcessViews, research director John O’Brien, follows on from his key report UK BPS Supplier Rankings & Landscape, 2013, with an in-depth look into the future of Indian HQ’d businesses in his report, What does the future look like for India HQ'd players in UK BPS?. John also writes on UK anomaly Genpact's opportunities and challenges in UK BPS after a recent European analyst even which he attended.
After the much anticipated launch of our latest research stream FinancialServicesViews (FSV), research director Peter Roe, published his core report Financial Services SITS Market Trends and Forecasts 2013. The report presents a heat map of SITS activity, identifying key areas for investment and focus. Keeping busy already, Peter also released Setting the Scene for Mobile Banking in which he looks at what has recently become one of the most exciting areas of the Financial Services industry with the increase in penetration of smartphones driving a revolution in how people bank, buy and pay.
From the Foundation Service stream, you’ll find IndustryViews Corporate Activity - Q3 2013, reporting on the mergers and acquisitions in Q3, the highest since Q4 2006; and IndustryViews Quoted Sector Q3 2013 in which we find out why the aggregate value of UK SITS companies listed on the London stock market (Main and AIM) hit a two-year peak last quarter, reaching £22.3bn. There’s also BrazilViews September 2013, which includes coverage of our managing partner Anthony Miller’s recent trip to the country’s largest tech hub, Porto Digital, in Recife, the state capital of Pernambuco. And in UKHotViewsExtra, Anthony Miller met up with Fouracre – read about it in Clear Books growing with the crowd.
Paid subscribers to our research services can download the full reports, or to see more of what we publish you’ll find details in our Quarterly Research Summary, available to download HERE. If you would like to find out more about our subscription packages, just drop Deborah Seth an email and she’ll be happy to help.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '07:20'
