Monthly Archives: July 2011

Top tips for outsourcing in social housing

We have made efforts to collect the best comments and advice on outsourcing. Here we will talk about some experts’ top tips on how to get the best deal while outsourcing your services.

Neil Thody, a fellow of the Royal Institutio of Chartered Surveyors and a member of Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, gives us two advices: beware of ‘suicide bidding’ and choosing partners carefully. And partner at Credo, Simon Bones tells us to look at the bigger picture. Doing things differently when outsourcing is in place, and allowing the provider more flexibility, is the key to greater savings. The chief executive of Willmott Dixon support services, Chris Durkin, advices that setting targets for what you want to achieve and having a try before you buy. Meanwhile, the head of housing sector consulting in the UK for Hay Group, Jonathan Magee, says that relationships are important. Cost, quality, intent and appetite for high performing services are key ingredients to successful outsourcing. Moreover, Councillor Henri Murison, the cabinet member for quality of life at Newcastle city council, indicates that procurement is more than saving money and you should involve your tenants.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2011/jul/28/top-tips-successful-outsourcing

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Top ICT companies’ standards while looking for graduates

Every company has its standard while hiring a graduate. Xero, a company in Taiwan, is looking for code hunger in graduates. Andrew Tokeley, product development manager of Xero, indicates that they are looking for a hunger for building beartiful software without being paid for it. Moreover, they would like people who have heard about Xero and want to ride the wave with them. Of course, if these people have been through university, it will be much better.

When it comes to Trade Me, its head of technology Dave Wasley, says that last year they found three great tech graduates via the Summer of Tech programme. He reveals they will be on the look-out there again this year. Wasley adds that they prefer to find the right people who will fit their culture as a company, which is smart, easy to get on with, optimistic, and gets stuff done, rather than grads who have specific skills or experience.

However, Orion Health preffers to hire top students and New Zealand Post Group Technology team looks mainly for software developers, testers, data warehouse, developers, web developers and content managers, architects, IT supplier managers, business analysts and project managers.

Source: http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/what-top-ict-companies-look-for-in-graduates

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How to create a table with alternative row style using PHP?

Table With Alternative Row Style

Figure 1: Table with Alternative Row Style

How to create a table with look and feel similar to Figure 1 from above? Follow these steps below:

 

Step 1: Create CSS style for the even an and odd class. In figure 2, the background color of the even and odd table are set to different variation of grey color.

CSS Odd Even Class

Figure 2: CSS Code for Odd and Even class

Step 2: Display array data in a table and set table row class to odd or even. Figure 3 displays the code for display the table from Figure 1.

PHP Code To Display Table with Alternative Row Styles

The array $tblData contains randomly generated integers. The variable $key is the array index and $value is the actual integers.

The key line of code to differ the odd and even row is:

The Key Line of Code for Differentiate Odd and Even Rows

($key & 1)  checks if the array index is even or odd. The code sets the table row style to even and odd according the array index.

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Critigen be a member of Re-Branded Colorado Technology Association

Yesterday, Critigen, a global leader in information technology consulting and IT outsourcing, announced its membership to the newly re-banded Colorado Technology Association (ColoTech), which was known as Colorado Software & Internet Association (CSIA) before and the largest technology association of Front Range.

Now ColoTech represent the more than 5,500 software, hardware and IT services companies. There are nearly 1,000 IT operations and more than 150,000 technology professionals in Colorado. And the move of evolving its branding reflects that Colorado will continued focus on software/hardware/IT companies as well as IT operations.

Critigen, whose headquarters is in Denver and having operations around the globe, facilitates actionable intelligence from enterprise data by developing solutions. Rand Knight, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Critigen, indicated that they were honored to work closely with the technology leaders in and around the state and it has a significant advantage.

Source: http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/11/07/p1802054/critigen-joins-re-branded-colorado-technology-association

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How to keep the outsourcing lifeboat afolat

A survey, which was conducted at InfoSecurity 2011, indicated that 77% of IT professionals thought their outsourcers had made up work to earn extra money. Today IT outsourcing indeed has worked well for some companies. However, the outcome hasn’t lived up to expectations for others. What’s worse, it even has lec to business-damaging disasters for a small number. Now here will talk about five golden rules to ensure your outsourcing lifeboat doesn’t sink mid-stream.

First of all, you should make a transition plan and stick to it. Then you have to get your outsourcing plan in writing. Thirdly, make sure you have transparent security practices. Fourthly, you should know the outsourcer’s financial status, compliance standards, history, and audit points. As a proverb says “Know the enemy know yourself and in every battle you will be victorious”. Last but not least, finding experts in the areas you need.

Source: http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/financial-director/feature/2096489/keeping-outsourcing-lifeboat-afloat

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IT outsourcing: Offshoring can kill innovation

David Pisano and Willy Shih, professors of Harvard Business School, indicate that “moving up the value chain” with offshoring can irreversibly damage a company’s even a country’s competitiveness and ability to innovate. As IT service providers are touting the benefits of outsourcing increasingly higher-value and more complex IT work to lower-cost locales and IT customers, who are still hyper-focused on cost cutting in today’s economic doldrums, are more than willing to consider the pitch. Professor Willy Siih said that offshoring can lead to damage to a set of capabilities embodied in your supplier network, your workforce, the educational infrastructrue associated with a technology area.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/236389/

it_outsourcing_how_offshoring_can_kill_innovation.html

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Target bets big on tech, outsourcing

Target Corporation is the second beggest discount retailer in the US. It is at the leading edge of business where companies sell iPads, online social networks and mobile phones. As the core of Target’s vision, technology and outsourcing is expected to become a $100 billion retailer over the next few years from right now around $67 billion in annual evenues.

Under the leading of world’s biggest retailer Walmart, US retailers are asking vendors to offer insights into business rather than only labour arbitrage and back-office projects.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/enterprise-it/strategy/Target-bets-big-on-technology-and-outsourcing/articleshow/9310021.cms

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Police tapping Iphone for facial recognition in the United States

Some law enforcement agencies in the United States are preparing a mobile facial recognition tool according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to them, the product will be available in about 40 agencies as early as September. The device, which has been developed by Massachusetts-based BI2 Technologies, allows officers to take a photo of a person from a distance of five feet or less. That photo is then compared with a database of images of people with criminal records to see if there is a match. The device is also capable of scanning a person’s iris.

However, the device is only working on Iphones, which leaves out agencies using Android, Windows Phone, or any other devices. According to the Journal, BI2 will offer an Android-capable version "in the future". In addition, BI2′s database isn’t necessarily exhaustive. The Journal said that it includes photos of correctional facility inmates but that only a few states are allowing the company to access mug shots. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal logs, as well as photos on driver’s licenses, are not included in the database.

Facial recognition has always been a big issue for privacy advocates, and BI2′s technology likely will face the same concerns. Following this concern, Sheriff Paul Babeu of Arizona’s Pinal County told the Wall Street Journal that his officers will only use the tool when a person of interest isn’t carrying any form of identification. What’s more, he said, his officers will not use it without cause.

Facial recognition has been lately criticized and questioned when the European Union decided to examine Facebook’s facial recognition feature to wheter it violates any privacy regulations and a claim by CNN that Google was working on a facial recognition application, which Google denied. They eventually admitted they were working on such a project but they stopped it before the launch because they were concerned the facial recognition could be used for both good and bad.

For law-enforcement agencies, there are also legal implications of facial recognition. As the Journal points out, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that agencies must have "reasonable suspicion" in order to fingerprint an individual. Whether agencies need to have the same "suspicion" to use BI2′s tool remains to be seen.
Regardless, it seems that at least some law-enforcement agencies believe the technology will be extremely beneficial.

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20079121-17/police-tapping-iphone-for-facial-recognition/

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Indian Stocks Decline as Wipro Plunges on Outsourcing Slowdown

Today, in Asia concern whether rising inflation and interest rates will dent corporate earnings, while India’s benchmark stock index dropped.

Wipro, Ltd., one of the world’s largest third party R&D services provider, caters to product engineering requirements in multiple domains. It plunged the most in three months after its earnings were little changed. However, the builder of dams, roads and bridges, Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. declined 1.6 percent. The Sensex has declined 9.3 percent this year. Moreover, three out of six Sensex companies that have reported earnings for the quarter ended June 30 have fallen short of analyst estimates as rising borrowing costs damped demand.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/20/bloomberg1376-LOKXT10UQVI901-1K4PAQA7432CK5D532JR9FT53P.DTL

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Reasons for outsourcing software development

As software development is very important to your business, you have to be careful when choose one company suitable for your business. Today, more and more customers have migrated to Internet for convenient purchasing of products they need, maintaining a good online website and business has become so crucial. However, there are reasons that you should outsource the job. Firstly, your business is highly complex and demands specialization as well as requires cost cutting measures at the same time. Secondly, outsourcing the job of software development may cut down your costs substantially. Moreover, outsourcing company will meet the schedule and deliver you the software development works without delay.

Source: http://www.prwire.com.au/pr/24037/why-you-must-outsource-software-development

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