IBM outsources UK desktop support operation lock+stock to Phoenix IBM is the Global Services Provider (GSP) that is outsourcing desktop support to Phoenix IT Group, The Channel can reveal. Yesterday Phoenix confirmed it has penned a five-year £40m contract with an unnamed GSP to provide desk-side services for the firm's employees as well as its customers. Around 180 IBM staffers are to be …
The Bank that I'm currently working for has moved to its third out-sourcing partner in less than ten years. The same staff are TUPE'd across each time and, funnily enough, the level of service never seems to improve.
To my jaded eye the changes have little to do with the quality of service delivered and everything to do with keeping the ITIL project managers looking busy and providing a few good golf days for the decision makers.
I assume the reason Phoenix can do this and others cannot and they say they can make a money of this type of outsource deal / contact work is because they pay their Own Engineers and staff so badly at £13.000 not passing 16,000k starting rates and cut costs to the determent of the own staff i.e. ( no pay rises in 5 years ect..) , while the Directors and Mangers reap the short term rewards while the figures look good!!! I read that Phoenix themselves have Outsourced most of their contracts and staff under TUPE in favour of cloud services!!
I doubt somehow they will get there returns they hope for having seen how badly all previous outsourcing deals have been handled by Phoenix and other companies which so far have left them all at a loss.
It strikes me as funny that all the most recent directors taken on at Phoenix seem to have a background in TUPE! and then seem to bail with large bonus’s the moment there is a hint of irregularity!! or loss!!!!!
When will they realise that outsourcing is rarely is cost effective in the long term for all concerned due to mounting logistic costs and external vendors costs and the service to the customer and quality suffers greatly due to increased time delays by third parties and limited resource to save money think on Phoenix....................(The future is cloud? is that not just the internet?)
The question one must ask is why IBM have elected to outsource this particular desk top support function. Normally, outsourcing is to achieve reduction in costs, more so when a service does not deliver the required return. Phoenix saw a drop in revenue in the year end to March and its operating profit dropped from 29.6m to 7.9m. Profit before tax was 3.8m compared to 25.3m in the prior year. Not unlike many that have grown through acquisition, its asset structure is heavily laden with intangibles and the balance sheet carries a fair measure of significant long term debt. Let's see if Phoenix can make a profit out of this deal.
Updated In one of the many ongoing age discrimination lawsuits against IBM, Big Blue has been ordered to produce internal emails in which former CEO Ginny Rometty and former SVP of Human Resources Diane Gherson discuss efforts to get rid of older employees.
IBM as recently as February denied any "systemic age discrimination" ever occurred at the mainframe giant, despite the August 31, 2020 finding by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that "top-down messaging from IBM’s highest ranks directing managers to engage in an aggressive approach to significantly reduce the headcount of older workers to make room for Early Professional Hires."
The court's description of these emails between executives further contradicts IBM's assertions and supports claims of age discrimination raised by a 2018 report from ProPublica and Mother Jones, by other sources prior to that, and by numerous lawsuits.
After freezing operations in Russia earlier this year, IBM has told employees it is ending all work in the country and has begun laying off staff.
A letter obtained by Reuters sent by IBM CEO Arvind Krishna to staff cites sanctions as one of the prime reasons for the decision to exit Russia.
"As the consequences of the war continue to mount and uncertainty about its long-term ramifications grows, we have now made the decision to carry out an orderly wind-down of IBM's business in Russia," Krishna said.
IBM chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna says it offloaded Watson Health this year because it doesn't have the requisite vertical expertise in the healthcare sector.
Talking at stock market analyst Bernstein's 38th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference, the big boss was asked to outline the context for selling the healthcare data and analytics assets of the business to private equity provider Francisco Partners for $1 billion in January.
"Watson Health's divestment has got nothing to do with our commitment to AI and tor the Watson Brand," he told the audience. The "Watson brand will be our carrier for AI."
IBM has been ordered to pay Houston-based IT firm BMC $1.6 billion for fraud and contract violations because it moved mutual client AT&T from BMC software to IBM software.
On Monday, US District Judge Gray Miller issued his final judgment [PDF] in the case, which began five years ago and culminated in a bench trial in March.
For years, IBM had serviced AT&T's mainframe computers which at least since 2007 have relied on BMC software. IBM and BMC in 2008 entered into a contract governing the business relationship between the two companies. And in 2015, the two IT outfits agreed several amendments including an Outsourcing Attachment (OA) that disallowed IBM from moving mutual clients over to its own software.
IBM has confirmed to former staff that it will no longer provide grants for the Retired Employee Club, meaning no more subsidized short trips to the Italian Riviera or golf days.
The clubs are regionally split. In the UK, for example, there are 28 local organizations that have run short trips or national tournaments including corporate games or group runs.
Joining a club was free for all Big Blue retirees with at least 10 years of service under their belt, regardless of pension age. For Local Clubs, members were asked to pay a small annual subscription.
RSA Conference IBM has expanded its extensive cybersecurity portfolio by acquiring Randori – a four-year-old startup that specializes in helping enterprises manage their attack surface by identifying and prioritizing their external-facing on-premises and cloud assets.
Big Blue announced the Randori buy on the first day of the 2022 RSA Conference on Monday. Its plan is to give the computing behemoth's customers a tool to manage their security posture by looking at their infrastructure from a threat actor's point-of-view – a position IBM hopes will allow users to identify unseen weaknesses.
IBM intends to integrate Randori's software with its QRadar extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities to provide real-time attack surface insights for tasks including threat hunting and incident response. That approach will reduce the quantity of manual work needed for monitoring new applications and to quickly address emerging threats, according to IBM.
IBM's self-sailing Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) has finally crossed the Atlantic albeit more than a year and a half later than planned. Still, congratulations to the team.
That said, MAS missed its target. Instead of arriving in Massachusetts – the US state home to Plymouth Rock where the 17th-century Mayflower landed – the latest in a long list of technical difficulties forced MAS to limp to Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. The 2,700-mile (4,400km) journey from Plymouth, UK, came to an end on Sunday.
The 50ft (15m) trimaran is powered by solar energy, with diesel backup, and said to be able to reach a speed of 10 knots (18.5km/h or 11.5mph) using electric motors. This computer-controlled ship is steered by software that takes data in real time from six cameras and 50 sensors. This application was trained using IBM's PowerAI Vision technology and Power servers, we're told.
IBM and Dell are the founding members of a new initiative to promote sustainable development in IT by providing a framework of responsible corporate policies for organizations to follow.
Responsible Computing is described as a membership consortium for technology organizations that aims to get members to sign up to responsible values in key areas relating to infrastructure, code development, and social impact. The program is also operating under the oversight of the Object Management Group.
According to Object Management Group CEO Bill Hoffman, also the CEO of Responsible Computing, the new initiative aims to "shift thinking and, ultimately behavior" within the IT industry and therefore "bring about real change", based around a manifesto that lays out six domains the program has identified for responsible computing.
No, this isn't deja vu. IBM's self-sailing Mayflower ship, tasked with making it across the Atlantic without any humans onboard to help, has suffered another mechanical glitch preventing it from continuing its intended journey.
Named after the vessel that brought passengers from England to America in the 17th century, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) was expected to retrace that historical voyage. But its attempts to cross the ocean, led by ProMare – a non-profit organization focused on marine research, with support from IBM – haven't exactly gone smoothly.
We admire the tenacity and the project's aims but we're not going to pretend this has been perfect.
IBM says it is rolling out its natural language processing software to a greater number of McDonalds' drive-thrus months after buying the automated order technology unit from the fast food chain, along with the team that developed it.
IBM already added extra NLP features to its Watson Discovery enterprise AI service last year, and now the burger-flinger's AI chatbot will feel the benefit, it said.
In October last year, Big Blue wolfed down the McD Tech Labs, which was itself created after McDonald's bought and renamed AI voice recognition startup Apprente in 2019.
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