Load of Big Green for Microsoft: Lloyds Banking Group inks company-wide Managed Desktop deal Microsoft and UK finance behemoth Lloyds Banking Group have signed a deal that will see the Windows giant manage the group's desktops and mobile devices. Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) is spanking the best part of £3bn on technology, and the Microsoft deal – whose value remains undisclosed – will see employees experiencing a " …
So more tax dollars wind their way into tax havens and out of the U.K. Not surprising really but it ss rather sad. WOuld have been better were they to have acquired the skills and kept them in house. I can't see how this will save them money in the long run.
Google, Microsoft and AWS will eventually offer everything as as a service or platform and all the professional services work will move in house with a significant chunk being automated.
I'm not against progress but when it means so much power is concentrated in the hands of three large businesses it does make me wonder what the future holds.
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The UK government sold the last of its shares in LBG in 2017 so there aren't any tax dollars in play.
Lloyds don't really have many of those skills in house any more; the only difference here will be that the jobs are no longer done by Indians wearing IBM lanyards but by Indians wearing Microsoft lanyards.
" or perhaps a poster of an adorable puppy over the shuttered door of a closed branch"
Branch closures may cut costs but they make lots of customers unhappy, especially as online banking has a habit of falling over*
Caveat - don't do online banking, do things in branch & get a receipt /documentation of what occurred for when they screw up as don't trust online banking (don't do anything online tat could risk me anything more than a tiny bit of cash)
I do online banking, but from time to time need a real branch to fix various screw-ups.
My wife recently opened a bank account (at a different bank) and had far more screw-ups in a month than I have had in 10 years, because the staff did not know (or could not explain) their own products.
As the other half works for part of the Lloyds empire, I doubt even Microsoft could make things any worse than they already are if they're revamping the desktops in the call centres. If what she tells me is right, the "cost savings through systems integration" that get talked about when mergers take place were made by doing sod all and leaving staff having to log off one system so they could access another because the internal IT crew couldn't manage to link them together. Having worked for HSBC, it made them look efficient!
As elReg have extensively documented, 'Office 360' might be a more truthful name in any year.
(PS, As we're two decades into the twenty first century, ladies can propose to their partner whenever they damned well please.)
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