Watch this space for new blogs from the recently appointed Director of Defence and Security for Intellect. Gordon Morrison has joined Intellect from Steria after 12 years in government service and over 13 years in the Defence and Security Industry (EDS, Detica and Steria).
Tesco has become the latest big player to stake a claim in the Video on Demand gold-rush by buying an 80 per cent stake in movie streaming service Blinkbox.
The deal pitches the high street retailer against Amazon’s Lovefilm and Sky in the UK and mirrors a deal by WalMart, the US supermarket group who own ASDA in the UK, who bought Vudu, a similar service, in the US last year.
This could be the start of a major upheaval in the VoD market given Tesco’s position as a major retailer of TVs and it’s huge customer base, many of whom it has strong links with through its clubcard offering.
Richard Brasher, Tesco’s UK chief executive said the deal will mean the company can link the purchase of a product to the building of a digital collection.
So, next stop Tesco working with CE manufacturers to offer VoD services bundled with connected TVs, tablets or other devices. products.
So how does that shake up this emerging market? Well the existing players will certainly be taking note of Tesco’s move given their marketing and spending power, plus links with customers. For CE equipment makers it could offer opportunities to drive interest in connected TVs and other devices. Businesses that operate in this area, such as broadcasters, who haven’t made their move yet may be running out of time.
By the time we get to our CE Conference, the future of digital entertainment in July it will be interesting to see how this market will have developed and I’m sure Tesco’s purchase will attract interest in the retail and understanding the connected consumer sessions.
I recently blogged about the technology implications of a structural separation of UK banks from the point of view of the technology industry, the long and short of which was that it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Since this point the much anticipated interim report has been published and the Independent Commission on Banking has proposed a less dramatic ‘firewall’ (as labelled by the media), that would protect the retail banking functions of the UK’s universal banks from the potentially hazardous activities of these banks’ investment and wholesale activities.
Japan’s most expensive disaster in its history – caused by an excruciating cocktail of earthquake, tsunami, nuclear alert and power shortages – has put global supply chains under far greater stress. Assembly firms are finding their supply chain, already affected by endemic component shortages and extended lead-times, now looking even more unpredictable.
Automotive and electronics manufacturers appear to be the hardest hit, where continued aftershocks, and now the fear of radioactive contamination, could extend supply disruptions for some time. For example, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Hitachi Chemical, control about 90% of the market for a specialty resin used to bond parts of microchips that go in to various devices. Both firms’ plants were damaged. Manufacturers around the world are now rushing to secure supplies of the scarcest components and materials, pushing up their prices. Numerous carmakers in Japan and North America including General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Honda have closed factories or scheduled downtime for plants, causing the loss of about 13% of worldwide car manufacturing output. (more…)
The update that the Independent Commission on Banking publishes on Monday will, of course, have an impact upon the future of the UK’s banking system – after all, that’s its remit. Of course I’m making a fairly sizeable presumption that the government will implement the Commission’s final recommendations in September.
One of the potential reforms that we may see the Commission leaning towards on Monday, is the structural separation of banks into retail and investment arms, or at the very least ring-fencing off different business lines into separate subsidiaries. As you will no doubt be aware, the perceived logic is that if the investment arm of a bank makes some dodgy decisions that puts its continued existence in jeopardy (including that of its retail banking arm – which allows individuals, businesses and the economy in general to go about its everyday business) it should be allowed to fail without dragging down the economically critical retail banking and payments infrastructure elements within it as well.
Back to Intellect’s Document & Content Management Group session- Jonathan Beardsley has practical experience of implementing social networking in a business context, drawing on the example of the G20 summit held in Canada 2010. On top of the social collaboration tool for the 125 delegates attending the conference, Open Text produced a secondary platform for engaging with the 3500 journalists covering the G20. The search tools available could identify content of interest as well as relevant individuals in the network.
Welcome to Intellect’s live blog on ‘Social Media Thursday’. Hot on the heels of this morning’s Financial Services Group meeting on social media as a corporate asset, it’s the Document & Content Management Group’s turn to get in on the act.
First up is Thomas Power, founder and Chairman of Ecademy, a social network for entrepreneurs with 600,000 members. Thomas opens with a You Tube video explaining his idea for Facebook to become a bank. That this tongue in cheek concept was picked up by several leading multinational banks within days of being posted online is illustrative of the potential and pace of social media.
Welcome back readers. Following Andrew Lansely’s speech yesterday, visitors congregated to a session focusing on patient control and access. Marlene Winfield (Patient Engagement Lead DH) and Anna-Lisa Silvestre (from Kaiser Permanente) gave two enlightening presentations. The session outlined how a patient journey should look like under the information revolution and what needs to happen to achieve this (i.e. how KP managed to get millions of patients online and to use it consistently and meaningfully). When I asked them how the NHS will drive online engagement by patients I was told that it needs to be driven by GPs. And that it will be a difficult but necessary journey for the DH to embark upon and that they have already had positive feedback from GPs.
Pre dinner nicotine kick from CIO for Health
Christine Connelly CIO for Health closed yesterday with a captivating presentation. (more…)
I’m in Birmingham today, attending the three-day 2011 Health Informatics Congress alongside 1,500 visitors (give or take a few). We had a great session this morning on digital innovation in the NHS. We heard the CIO from the North East SHA and the lead for QIPP Digital and Technology Vision on what is already happening in the NHS and what is to come. A lot of the focus is on communication, information sharing and clinical and patient engagement. It was encouraging to see many in the audience coming from the NHS and expressing an eagerness for using technology to do their job better.
post-lunch wisdom from the SoS Andrew Lansley
Following the political spectacle surrounding the NHS reforms over the weekend where Mr. Lansley “acknowledged there are ‘genuine concerns’ about the NHS shake-up in England” we were given reassurance that no matter what, the NHS needs an Information Revolution….
My mother teaches a class of 9-year-olds in the US. Recently, she dug out 10 small slates and some chalk and brought them into her classroom. She fired questions at the students and asked them to scribble their answers on the slates in teams. The kids found this to be a huge novelty and were actively engaged in the lesson for over an hour. Fantastic – slates and chalk are now so old, they are retro cool!
I think this is a great illustration of how stimulating students’ creativity and engaging them in the learning process has got to be the new paradigm. You don’t need the latest and greatest technology to do this. However, ICT can be a huge asset to opening up possibilities and expanding what you can do in or out of the classroom. But don’t take my word for it. (more…)
