This week’s announcement of a ‘global partnership’ between Fujitsu and UNIT4 is interesting news for both parties. The goal is to address the needs of large and medium companies seeking both hardware and software to support IT transformation initiatives, with Fujitsu and UNIT4 able to offer reduced costs to prospective clients through the partnership. For UNIT4, this sees yet another [...]

PAC attended UNIT4’s user conference yesterday at the ICC in Birmingham, UK, where a number of announcements demonstrated how the company is sailing a course toward joining the premier league of software firms in the UK market. For starters there are the numbers: UNIT4’s UK revenue increased by 16% in 2012, to reach over £75m. As PAC’s recently published figures [...]

This morning saw BPO specialist arvato beat off rival bidders Capita and HP to be confirmed as the chosen partner to acquire and operate the former Department for Transport (DfT) shared services centre, now known as Independent Shared Service Centre 1 (ISSC1). This is a landmark development for the UK public sector software and IT services (SITS) market in two [...]

Capita’s 2012 results revealed respectable organic growth of 3% boosted by acquisitions which led to 14% overall top line growth to £3.4bn. But the contribution of one division stands out. Capita Justice & Secure Services (J&SS) announced an impressive 122% rise in sales to £198.3m. Although the volume of revenue for J&SS is small compared to the group as a [...]

Capita has agreed to acquire Northgate Managed Services (NMS) in a £65m deal. At first glance, this appears to fit in with Capita’s strategy of making mid-sized acquisitions to beef up its IT services business, Capita IT Services (CITS), with the added bonus of a new ‘nearshore’ delivery centre in Newtonabbey, Northern Ireland. The move also seems to mark the [...]

2e2 going into administration is bad news for the UK SITS market, particularly for the 2,000 staff at risk of redundancy. It also highlights the risks of the ‘buy to grow’ business model that it had employed. One issue that has not received much coverage is what will become of 2e2’s contract base. Although 2e2’s administrators (FTI Consulting) are working [...]

Reports of a ‘major blow’ to G4S following the collapse of a ‘multi-million deal to outsource services’ for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire police forces paint a very gloomy outlook for software and IT services (SITS) providers targeting the police sector. However, PAC believes that this announcement simply highlights the shift in emphasis for Police IT following the election of Police [...]

Jeremy Hunt, the UK Government’s Health Secretary, has issued a challenge to its National Health Service (NHS): to become paperless by 2018. This follows the publication of a report suggesting that the NHS can save billions of pounds by implementing technology that provides electronic operation and delivery of prescriptions, referrals and care records (see the Department of Health announcement here [...]

The replacement of appointed Police Authorities with elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) has had a major impact on the emergency services software and IT services industry. For the last two years, there has been a growing pipeline of opportunities for software and IT services (SITS) providers to engage with police forces, such as those deals signed between Lincolnshire Police [...]

Third quarter results from both EVRY and Tieto both point to the growing importance of consulting and systems integration (C&SI) to the Nordic region’s domestic IT services providers.