Ever wondered what it’s like to be sat in a high performance car whilst being raced around one of Britain’s most famous race circuits?
Thanks to 360° Technology, you can now take a seat in the new Ariel Nomad whilst Top Gear’s Stig races around Dunsfold Circuit at high speed. Check out the video below.
The UK has a strong foundation for connectivity, but the Government recognizes the need to do more. So what is it doing about it?
As a Frontrunner, Britain is reaping the benefits of early investments in cloud and big data assets and a-well-thought-out strategy to drive the adoption of 4G, fiber optics, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
With an academic environment conducive to innovation and technical collaborations between the public and private sectors, as well as a steady flow of funding from the government, the stage is set for augmented innovation in Britain.
The UK government is on a mission to transform its broadband network across the country to make speeds of 100 Mbps available to all of its citizens. In 2015, the UK Government announced it would invest £1.7 billion through 47 local projects to improve broadband – with the overall aim of ensuring that approximately 95 percent of the country has access to super-fast broadband by 2017 and 98 percent has 4G coverage.
Investments in high-speed broadband, data center (DC) networks, and cloud platforms are in turn creating a new form of competitive advantage.
Now, a growing community of developers is inventing new products and services, using these platforms as their foundation.
By fostering innovation, the UK is hoping to achieve an advantage in a global race to develop the standards that will underpin 5G, which experts expect will be crucial to the development of IoT and the growth of augmented innovation. Based on an audit by the National Infrastructure Committee the UK will set out its 5G strategy in 2017.
When it comes to fast broadband, the UK is leading the way, with adoption levels 50 percent higher than Germany and significantly higher than other major European economies. The uptake in fast broadband reflects a growing demand for media applications, especially for entertainment.
For instance, Virgin Media, part of Europe’s largest cable network, is planning to extend its reach from 12.6m homes to 17m – almost two-thirds of UK households – with an initiative called Project Lightning.
This plan is expected to create 6,000 jobs and is one of the largest private digital infrastructure investments in the UK in recent years.
The UK has invested solidly in its digital infrastructure. It has the largest digital economy in the G20 as a percentage of GDP over the last five years. However, the international landscape is getting competitive.
The challenge for Britain is to maintain its lead in the face of tough and varied competition, and an increasingly tepid global economic forecast.
The British government could be a good role model for other countries as they chart their way on the connectivity map. It has shown foresight by having a long-term strategy and has supported its digital initiatives with appropriate funding.
In 2014 the Government committed to investing £42 million into the Alan Turing Center –for research into the collection, organization and analysis of big data. A further investment of £40 million was announced in September 2015 for the IoTUK program, with £10 million set aside for a single collaborative R&D project in a city region.
The UK public sector has been the biggest adopter of cloud solutions and has set an example for other verticals to follow.
The government’s introduction of G-Cloud has allowed small companies to compete with the larger traditional players for government contracts to supply cloud IT services. Initiatives such as G-Cloud have encouraged bids from smaller IT service providers and are attracting investments to build DCs to serve the rest of Europe.
The government is also investing in the development of 5G mobile technologies with the launch of Europe’s largest academic research center. The UK 5G Innovation Center is the largest European center dedicated to the development of the next generation of mobile services. In an innovative collaboration between the public and private sectors, the center is funded by £12 million from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and more than £68 million from a number of private international telecom groups.
The government has nurtured an environment that supports start-ups and entrepreneurship. For instance, the UK government has recently exempted about 100 DCs from tax on energy usage in order to create a favorable environment for the DC business.
Given how power hungry DCs are, the move has energized the DC market supply side.
In 2014, Innovate UK, the Government’s innovation agency backed a consortium of 40 UK tech companies to create a new open IoT specification that allows machines to work together over the internet, and for applications to analyze data independent of human intervention. As part of the Government’s digital economy strategy, Innovate UK pledged to invest £30 million a year for the first four years (2015-2019) to support innovation in the digital economy. Below are a few examples of companies that have benefitted from this investment:
Crowd Connected has launched its ‘co-locator’ system to aggregate festival-goers’ smartphone data to map behavior and allow organizers to respond accordingly. Their collaboration with Live Nation at Wireless Festival 2014 came after a £25,000 grant and competition win with Innovate UK.
As a Frontrunner on the Connectivity Journey, the UK is slowly shifting towards augmented innovation, and is therefore in a position to share its experience and expertise in reaching this point on the connectivity path. It has proved by example that a healthy collaboration between government and industry can achieve measurable successes for the economy as well as the technological world.
Additional Sources:
– Global Connectivity Index
Telford & Wrekin Council today welcomed the announcement that Magna International Inc plans to build a new world class aluminium casting facility at T54.
Councillor Shaun Davies, Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet member for Business, hailed the announcementas an “extremely significant” day for the borough of Telford and Wrekin.
“I am delighted that Magna International has decided to locate its new multi-million pound facility here in Telford,” said Councillor Davies.
“This signals the dawn of a bright new era of opportunity for everyone in the borough. In Telford, we pride ourselves on being inventive and dynamic and the details of the high tech production process Magna has announced for its planned facility shows that they are a perfect fit for us.
“We have been talking to Magna International for more than two years and an awful lot of hard work has gone on behind the scenes to make this possible so today is a realisation of all those discussions.
“I would like to thank everyone at the Council who has been involved in those negotiations – from the first contact at a national conference through to the conclusion of the deal in the last few weeks.
“This has been made possible as a result of the land deal that we announced in March with the Homes and Communities Agency and the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership, which will see us deliver 8500 new jobs through investing in bringing sites like T54 to the market.
“Magna’s announcement today represents a hugely significant multi-million pound investment which demonstrates that Telford & Wrekin Council’s drive to attract new business and jobs is realising spectacular results. “This major development will see the creation of 295 skilled local jobs when the plant is at full capacity. The investment will also support many more jobs in the local supply chain.
“It also demonstrates the value of our strengthening links with the West Midlands and its world wide reputation for advanced manufacturing. With the T54 site just 12 miles from Jaguar Land Rover’s i54 complex, we are seeing significant levels and enquiries and we are confident more market leaders from the automotive supplies sector will be investing in Telford.
“Magna’s proposed world class aluminium casting facility in Telford will be the largest automotive development in the West Midlands after the Jaguar Land Rover complex at the i54 site. We confidently expect that this will prove a gateway for further investment in the T54 site, which is already home to AXYZ Automation and Filtermist International.
“Subject to receiving planning permission, we expect that construction on the new facility will begin in the autumn of this year. Magna has said production will begin in 2018.”
T54 is Telford and Wrekin’s flagship automotive and advanced manufacturing employment site.
The first group of IT graduates from Accenture’s Newcastle-based apprentice programme will all walk into jobs at the IT services giant free of student debt, after graduating in April 2016.
Thirteen apprentices became the first to pass out of the scheme, which combines several years of on-the-job experience with a salary and education. This resulted in the award of a Higher Apprenticeship for IT, software, web and telecoms professionals, incorporating a foundation degree and Level 4 BTEC diploma.
Surely the greatest pull of the scheme is the absence of crippling debt following years of study.
Back in 2013, local young people joined the company’s scheme, at Accenture’s Cobalt Business Park near Newcastle, north-east England. All 13 graduates will soon start full-time work at the firm’s Newcastle-based centre, the UK link in its global delivery network.
The programme’s success has meant that it has already been expanded and the next 19-strong group of apprentices, set to graduate in July 2016, are already on their way.
The expansion is not a surprise, with apprenticeships experiencing something of a revival in the UK. The IT sector is part of a new industrial revolution, driven by digital technology, with trends such as the internet of things (IoT) breathing new life into similar schemes.
Three graduates inside story.
Ben Manning was 17 years old when he joined the programme. “I was in sixth form doing my A-Levels and I wanted to go to university to study computer science. I heard about the Accenture scheme, which was pretty similar to the path I wanted to follow,” he said, adding that it was easier partly because the degree is paid for by Accenture.
He has worked on customer relationship management (CRM) software, mobile technologies and at HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) operation in Newcastle.
He’ll stay at Accenture after graduation and hopes to continue developing at HSBC, the company’s customer, and could also be offered a top-up year to attain his full degree. He’s happy to stay at the HMRC, he said, where he is part of a small team delivering software changes.
Ashley Walker, 28, who studied IT during a further education course, joined the scheme from a business degree, after realising the latter wasn’t for him. “I heard about the Accenture programme from a friend of a friend,” he said.
On the apprentice scheme he started in a maintenance role at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), another Accenture customer, working on the RPA’s IT system, known as Rita, and got to grips with things such as batch schedulers and Unix.
He is currently working on Salesforce.com technology and, like Manning, hopes to top up to a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree.
He said the course has surprised him through the opportunities it has provided, even beyond the learning experience. “One week I was sat doing my normal stuff at the RPA, and the next week I was collecting an award on behalf of Accenture, meeting Nick Clegg and staying in a nice hotel.” He has also spent time working in Madrid.
While Manning’s computer science interest and Walker’s IT course at college seem to be appropriate launch pads to the apprentice scheme, IT experience is not actually a requirement.
For example, Scott Gillan embarked on his A-Levels but wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after that. “I heard about an apprenticeship and thought this was the best choice because the company pays for your degree, so you earn while you learn and get experience as well.”
He said he might be £40,000 in debt if he had completed a degree. “All my mates went down the university route and they are going to be stuck with this kind of debt,” he said, adding employees want possible recruits to have experiences of life.
Gillan works in HMRC software testing, and is happy to remain there gaining experience in public sector IT. He said he would like to progress to a team leader or manager role and see where he can go from there.
And there could be great opportunities even if the graduates remain in Newcastle, where Accenture is developing operations the business considers important for it both nationally and globally.
The north-east England operation is a vital cog in Accenture’s global delivery engine. In fact, Accenture’s Cobalt Park office is the only UK facility where the company’s name adorns a building, according to UK managing director Oliver Benzecry.
The centre, Accenture’s main UK delivery operation, is part of the company’s global delivery network, which encompasses more than 140,000 people globally, the majority of whom are in India and the Philippines.
Emma McGuigan, who runs Accenture’s UK and Ireland Technology business, said the Newcastle operation was originally seen as a way of getting a different mix of people and skills. These complement other regions, she said. For instance, agile development might start in Newcastle and then be scaled in Mumbai.
She said the centre was first used to support government customers that did not want data going overseas, but added that this approach was now changing.
Five years ago the centre was supporting about 10 clients, mainly in the public sector. “We now have 60 clients supported from Newcastle, which is a significant percentage of the business, and they are all accessing it in different ways,” said McGuigan.
For instance, UK customers might not have the volume to justify a large offshore shared services contract, for operations such as Salesforce, and the Newcastle operation can provide a small local alternative.
Scaling down services is important as changes in technology, such as the increased use of the cloud, lead to a fall in the average deal size of IT services contracts, something which McGuigan said would be perfect for a delivery centre such as Newcastle.
It’s the rapidity of technology change that gives the north-east England operation another advantage. Mark Larsen, who heads up the Newcastle operation, said the centre is flexible and the people within it are able to shift between technologies. “It’s now about getting people with the right curiosity, aptitude and skills. They have to switch between technologies very quickly.”
Getting the right people is clearly critical, and with 500 people applying for 20 places there’s a lot of choice.
Despite the success, Accenture knows there is still work to do, not least attracting the right kind of people, something which is not always obvious.
Larsen said the advertising used for the scheme needs to be adapted to attract the right people, as well as more women. There were no women in the first group of graduates, and there’s only one among July’s graduates.
“It is harder to attract girls but it is improving and there are more interested,” said the operations manager for the Newcastle delivery centre.
– Karl Flinders
Microsoft and the Bloodhound Project have launched an engineering competition to encourage more children into science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) careers using the BBC micro:bit.
As part of the BBC micro:bit Model Rocket Car Challenge, teams made up of Year Seven and sixth form students are building model rocket fuel-powered cars from foam before implanting a micro:bit to capture racing data.
The on board micro:bit will record real-time data from the cars during races. This, combined with data from a micro:bit placed at the finish line, will help pupils tweak the designs of their cars to make them faster. The fastest cars from across the country will race against each other in June 2016.
Mark Chapman, chief engineer at Bloodhound, claimed mixing the disciplines of engineering and technology, and presenting them in a creative way for the project, is an attempt to encourage young people to further pursue Stem studies.
“For the children to actually build something and fire it on the playground at their school is amazing,” Chapman said. “If, at the age of 12, 13, 14, they think a job in engineering is boring, projects like this are really important to get them engaged.”
Bloodhound originally ran the event without Microsoft’s data analytics capabilities, but felt it was important to give the competition more dimensions – allowing the kids to analyse car data and adapt their design accordingly shows a practical demonstration of how technology can be used in industry.
One of the teams reached 533mph with their car, and will use the data collected by the micro:bit to attempt a faster time in the final.
Chapman said it was better to target children as early as possible, to spark an interest in Stem subjects while they are still creative and curious, and before they have been exposed to industry stereotypes.
“We need a generation that will question politicians and economists. It’s no longer acceptable to say you can’t understand technology or maths, and hopefully projects like this will get them interested.”
To encourage a better level of digital knowledge in children, the UK government introduced computing and computational thinking as a mandatory subject from the ages of five to 16 in schools.
But the IT industry is currently suffering from an IT skills gap and a dry pipeline as industry struggles to find skilled candidates to fill roles.
Andrew Webber, emerging developer audience lead at Microsoft, claimed adding the engineering and data analysis angles to the creative rocket car project is “grasping that age group, both girls and boys” without seeming daunting or boring.
“We talk about not coding, but creating – it’s a totally different discussion,” he said.
Webber claimed the industry is facing a “ticking time bomb for digital skills” as more young people leave education without the skills needed for business.
To prevent this, Webber proposed that the Stem and education industries should work together to ensure students are “more employable when they leave school”, adding that “Microsoft has for the past 30 years been looking to help both teachers and young people engage in computational thinking”.
Melanie Podya, an information and communications technology (ICT) teacher at competition participant Kennet Secondary School, claimed it’s a misconception that schools and industries are at loggerheads over skills.
“We tend to think about industry and education as having two different agendas, and actually they don’t,” she said.
“We both invest in our people to help them reach their potential, to help them come up with the most creative solutions, to get to the top and be the best they can be.”
Podya claimed she commonly asks industry speakers to come to classes to explain to children what a job in the IT industry is like, and industry professionals are often surprised at how advanced kids are in computational thinking and technology skills.
Making sure both students and industry are “switched on” to opportunities for work throughout the pipeline is important in closing the skills gap, said Podya.
“We’re teaching them to problem solve, and they don’t do that in other subjects and that’s why it’s key,” she said.
“To have someone from industry come in and say ‘you, right now, could work for us’ – what more inspiration do you want?”
Projects such as the BBC micro:bit Model Rocket Car Competition are important, said Podya, because they demonstrate to children where skills they are learning in school can be applied to industry.
Podya explained the technology industry is becoming more about teamwork and creativity, putting an emphasis on soft skills as well as development skills.
“It’s a common opinion that only exceptionally bright people do computer science, and that is so untrue. You’re always going to get the exceptional child who doesn’t have soft skills by the nature of the subject, but I’ve seen a huge change in the 10 years I’ve been in education,” she said.
“It just becomes the subject that everybody can do, and that’s what we need to make it – not a niche subject, a subject that everyone can do.”
A growing need to make datacentres more efficient and easier to manage has driven the use of converged infrastructure (CI) in recent years. According to 451 Research’s recent study of adoption trends, 40% of IT buyers said they planned to increase their spending in CI during the final quarter of 2015; just 17% said they plan to invest in traditional servers.
The trend has prompted a shift in how operators manage their facilities, with 40% of respondents to the survey reporting difficulties while attempting to source staff with CI skills. Whereas the older, siloed approach to datacentre design required separate administrators to manage the network, server and storage resources, a facility kitted out with CI appliances often calls for a slightly different approach.
CI appliances are often marketed as having been tested and configured before installation, which eliminates much of the manual work. And with the datacentre’s network, storage and computing elements all housed in a single appliance, the need for separate administrators to manage these resources is reduced.
While this is great news for operators looking to cut costs by reducing headcount, the trend may require some urgent re-skilling for datacentre-focused IT professionals, to ensure they know how to manage all parts of the CI stack, rather than just the individual components.
This is the view of Emma Fryer, associate director for climate change programmes at IT sector trade body TechUK, who works closely with the datacentre industry to promote sustainability.
“At the very commoditised end, the datacentre engineer needs to be able to span power, network, compute, storage and process skills. And when it breaks – fast track response and 24/7 availability for an ‘always on’ client base,” she says.
“Datacentre technicians in many environments will increasingly be expected to be generalists, but the real question is what the balance between them should be – or even whether we are seeking a general requirement or lots of different specific requirements.”
At present, there is mixed industry opinion about how much demand there is for IT professionals with these types of skills.
Rick Vanover, senior product strategy manager at virtualisation management software supplier Veeam, claims the demand for IT professionals with CI skills is beginning to rise.
“Over time, the need for a converged skillset has developed. We saw it happen in the virtualisation space, and now a new offering of technologies has come in to address them with hyper-converged technologies,” says Vanover.
He says the key to success with CI lies in IT staff understanding how the technology can be applied to solve real problems of scaling-out and datacentre performance.
Market watcher Forrester Research supports this view, based on the contents of its August 2015 Vendor Landscape: Hyperconverged Platforms report, which cites anecdotal evidence as proof of the rising demand for CI-savvy datacentre workers.
“For several years Forrester has been hearing anecdotal evidence that early adopters of first-generation converged infrastructure – such as Cisco, HP, and IBM – have already collapsed some of their infrastructure and operations silos,” the report states.
“Forrester believes the adoption of hyperconverged systems will accelerate this trend, because it further abstracts the underlying management complexity – particularly in the storage domain.”
However, Scott McGlinchey, chief operations officer of IT consultancy Exception, says that – with so many enterprises still operating legacy, siloed datacentre setups – demand for CI specialists has not hit its peak just yet.
“I don’t think we’ve really hit the real demand for converged infrastructure skills yet. You can see that, for organisations that have got a handle on their legacy estate, convergence skills could be the next step, though,” he says.
“What we are seeing is an increased demand for architects. However, the skillset expected has moved, from principle formulation, policy, strategy and governance, to that of experienced technical delivery lead with multi-platform experience across several technology silos.
“DevOps, server and app virtualisation, and cloud experience are in higher demand too at the moment.”
McGlinchey’s comments seem to suggest time is on the side of IT professionals willing to retrain in anticipation of the rising demand for CI skills.
Colin Lynch, principal consultant at Computacenter UK, embarked on a supplier-backed training course to build out his CI knowledge, as part of his ongoing push to keep on top of emerging IT trends.
“Here in the UK, most universities and higher education colleges tend to teach students broader industry skills and then, when graduates enter the industry, employers train them. They are often taught the basics of virtualisation and networking – but won’t know specifically how suppliers implement this,“ he says.
From here, professionals may go on to undertake a supplier-specific course – such as Cisco’s Academy course or VCE’s Certified Professionals Programme – to fine-tune their learning.
“It’s run this way because all suppliers have different approaches. This gives graduates a wider choice of career paths and doesn’t hinder their chances of securing employment,” Moulton adds.
Robert Rutherford, CEO of IT consultancy Quostar, says IT professionals should look to build out their integration skills.
“There’s opportunity in the areas for development focusing on hanging different platforms and providers together – moulding and adapting services between datacentres and different suppliers,” he says.
“This in turn will lead to increased security and compliance requirements, creating demand for in-depth cloud security and compliance skills and experience.”
Meanwhile in addition to their technical skills – CI specialists are increasingly expected to be well-versed in business matters too. As IT recruitment consultants “We tend to look for candidates who can demonstrate a mix of cross-skilling and with experience of more than just technology – candidates who are able to explain and translate technical language and concepts to business stakeholders are always in high demand!”
If IT teams cannot communicate effectively with business teams so that they understand the potential benefits, it is likely that many crucial projects will struggle to get off the ground.
