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IT World

September 15, 2008, 10:02 AM —  Computerworld UK —
Lehman Brothers, which went spectacularly bankrupt yesterday, was a technology powerhouse that pioneered grid computing and was able to sell the technology it developed in house to traditional software vendors.

The bank spent $1.14 billion last year on IT and employed 25,000 staff in total, including more than 5,000 in the UK. The future of those staff and the projects they were involved in is now in doubt as administrators study the books.

Lehman’s chief technology office Hari Gopalkrishnan was regarded as one of the most creative IT leaders in the US.

There’s been much debate about the recent market conditions, the failure of Lehman’s, what that would mean for the finance sector, for IT teams. Interestingly there have been mixed results, some people have found instant opportunities easily moving into another bank carrying on in their field (anything in risk analytics or front office seems to be popular). How the market conditions will affect you will depend on your role, where you fit in within your business. An interesting read, check it out.

Finextra

Despite the fall out from the credit crunch, UK banking group Barclays is planning to add 1500 staff to its newly-established technology facility in Singapore over the next five years.

According to a report by Singapore daily The Straits Times, the bank has already hired around 110 local staff - including engineers and IT professionals - and plans to add another 300-400 staff by the end of next year. Barclays expects to have added 1500 new hires at the unit in three to five years’ time.

Speaking to Straits Times reporters at the opening of the new technology centre, Frits Seegers, chief executive of Barclays’ global retail and commercial banking unit, said despite the on-going financial turmoil, Barclays sees this as a good time to expand.

Check out this article, it’s talking about how Barclays is continuing to invest despite the economic activities and trading conditions. Remember that as one market grinds to a halt, there’s another growing and making money at the same time, with that in mind establishing how you can make revenue is key. We’re not buying hardware, are we consolidating, is there demand for infrastructure consolidation/virtualization services?

StorageProPortal

It appears that, once again, UK PLC is following in the footsteps of our cousins across the pond and suffering (albeit a little later than they did) a credit crunch.

There is talk of a full blown recession, but that remains just talk. So, what you may ask, has this to do with a data centre?

Data centres house the majority of the equipment that not only powers the internet, but also that hosts many of the commercial websites that we may visit to make a purchase.

They also host the equipment which is used to process our online payments and, they host the equipment that our banks use to store all of our account information.

An article I was reading on the train this morning reminded me of a conversation with Chris.

I got accussed the other day of being brand focussed. I was out to dinner with Chris in Canary Wharf. He was talking about the world ending, the credit crunch, the risk to incomes jobs etc, (of the recent events in the banking sector and share prices). He was surprised when I said he needed a re-brand.

“What are you talking about?.

At this point let me begin.

By this I meant a number of things. When it comes to redundancies, changes in roles, you often tend to find these decisions have been made already, that cost cutting is a part of life, what you need to think about is you, your place within the business, your ability to deliver. This is not to say we don’t worry about our future, but sitting worrying isn’t earning you revenue, isn’t contributing to your ability to perform your role. Recognize that what might change is from a standpoint of investment, buying those new ESX servers for that consolidation project. To seeing what servers we can re-use, seeing what systems we can consolidate, how we can reduce our operational costs - do we need to be called out for all those things. I’m a great believer that as one door closes, another opens up. So the demand for tier one server integration experts might not be all it can be. But the demand for support teams continues, we might have less investment in new hardware, new systems, but we still have to keep our existing ones running. Indeed with the internet spreading, new consumers coming online all the time, the number of projects of demand for infrastructure in developing economies is set to continue. Maybe not in grand terms, but in sales nonetheless, how you as a business, as a server guy deal with this will depend on you, but focus on delivery, focus on you and everything else will follow. Re-brand from what if to getting the job done.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/mac/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208403002

Apple on Monday offered a preview of “Snow Leopard,” the next major version of its Mac OS X operating system.

Snow Leopard, which presumably will be designated Mac OS X 10.6 when released in about a year, will focus more on speed and stability than new features. It will be optimized for multicore processors and will be designed to facilitate future Mac platform innovation.

I wonder what new things will come with this new release of Mac OS X, additionally what minimum system requirements will come with them? Will they still support the PowerPC systems?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAp37s1btaVI&refer=home

May 26 (Bloomberg) — Societe Generale SA’s report on how Jerome Kerviel evaded the bank’s controls to amass 50 billion euros ($79 billion) in unauthorized bets on stock-index futures backs up what he’s told authorities, his lawyer said.

“It validates what Jerome has said,” Guillaume Selnet, Kerviel’s defense lawyer, said yesterday in a telephone interview. “The only possible explanation is negligence, individual and systemic negligence.”

The report, commissioned by the Paris-based bank after it announced a record 4.9-billion-euro loss in January from unwinding Kerviel’s positions, faulted supervisors for not reacting appropriately to several “alert signals.” They missed at least 1,071 bogus trades used to disguise the risk of the positions and reduce the level of scrutiny internal controllers would apply, the report released on May 23 said.

Kerviel, 31, is under criminal investigation on charges of breach of trust, falsifying documents and hacking the bank’s computers to execute and conceal trades. If convicted, he faces as much as five years in prison and 375,000 euros in fines.

This article contains some commentary and updates regarding the report that was released into the losses at Societe Generale.

Ensuring that you have the right compliance and risk processes in place, that they are followed, and that there is an audit trail in place is something that I suspect is an industry wide issue. An issue which will need to be looked at by individual businesses, their regulators and shareholders, how this affects your business will depend on a number of factors, do check out the article.