Faster bank payments ready to roll

From May, businesses will be able to have UK internet, telephone banking and standing order payments cleared in as little as 15 seconds instead of three days.

The Faster Payments initiative, offered as a service by VocaLink, will transform UK payments from the slowest in Europe to the fastest.

Businesses will benefit by receiving money more quickly, but faster payments will put their internal IT systems and processes under pressure and they will need ensure their IT systems are ready.

Gareth Lodge, analyst at TowerGroup, said businesses might not be able to benefit from faster payments if their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems cannot keep pace.

"Corporates will receive payments throughout the day and it is a question of whether their systems are capable of keeping up to speed with this. If they do not realise they have been paid, they will not harness the full benefit of a quick payment."

The risk of losses to error will also increase because once payments are cleared under the scheme, they cannot be revoked. This means the payee must get the transaction right the first time.

Lodge said businesses using Faster Payments would have to have systems in place to ensure payments were made correctly.

"Businesses have to be careful that the payments go to the right person and the person sending the payment is authorised to do so," he added.

Banks are preparing for faster payments by installing sophisticated technology to check payments automatically.

Barclays, for example, is extending the use of modulas checking, which makes sure account numbers and sort codes are compatible.

A spokesman said, "At the moment we do it in some areas, but not in many. But with faster payments coming in May, this is a must-have for all transactions."

Earlier this month, the Royal Bank of Scotland announced it would implement technology from Experian Payments to carry out thorough checks of payees and recipients, as well as checking that payments follow typical patterns for the business customer.

Jane Barber, the bank's head of product development, said the arrival of faster payments, combined with the Single European Payments Area (Sepa), meant banks' systems must be upgraded to reduce errors and costs.

By Karl FlindersPosted

Virtual desktop on a flash drive

SanDisk divulges details of a new USB flash memory stick which could quick and easily virtualise the corporate desktop without the need to be online.

SanDisk revealed to IT PRO its plan with Check Point to create a 'secure virtual workplace', where a secure corporate computing environment is contained on a USB flash drive.

The corporate environment can be accessed offline and online, with applications, data and personal settings contained in a securely protected drive. This could represent a major product shift for remote working, as employees could load up their office environment on any PC without the need of a laptop.

"Right now, very few companies give every single one of their employees a laptop, because they are very expensive and they take several thousand dollars a year to maintain," said Mike Langberg, senior public relations manager at SanDisk.

"This is going to cost much less to maintain and more workers who haven't got laptops are going to be able to get mobile with these devices."

Put simply, the new device would work by plugging in the USB flash drive into the computer you want to use, where you are prompted for a password.

This gives the user access to the secure storage on the drive together with a test for any malware on the computer. Then the desktop is replaced by the corporate workspace.

"You can launch applications directly from the drive inside of the security shell which separates it from the host," said Dror Todress, senior manager for SanDisk marketing enterprise division.

"So if the host is infected or is not online you will still be able to launch the environment, work on your corporate applications, save data, save personal settings, and also toggle back and forth to my other PC," he added.

He said that if you wanted to get online, this could be done using Check Point's VPM technology.

SanDisk said that this technology wasn't there to replace the laptop, but would help the companies which were outsourcing the purchasing and maintenance of their laptops to employees.

Todress said: "It would give them a greater IT budget and allow them to get any laptop they choose and also have it serviced. It would take the load off IT in handling the hardware, and they only thing they would have to manage are the images on the drives."

IT PRO asked about the security of using USB flash drives and the fact that it was likely to be a lot easier to lose something so small as opposed to a laptop.

"The fact that is hardware encrypted makes it a lot more secure than any kind of laptop," stated Todress. "If you lose it, and someone finds it that doesn't have a password, it's like a stone."

Langberg said that if you lost one of the devices, the only cost would be replacing the stick, because no data would escape a secure drive. He also said that it was very easy to back up.

Todress said that he hoped that the 'secure virtual workplace' USB flash memory drive would be out by the end of the year.

By Asavin Wattanajantra

Analysts claim IT can realise €40m savings without impairing effectiveness

Companies considering cutting IT budgets in the face of dismal economic conditions have been warned to be prudent about where those cuts are made.

A report released today by analysts The Hackett Group suggests that a typical Global 1000 company can expect to save €40m a year on IT spending, without impairing organisation performance.

Nevertheless the report also warns that making cuts in the wrong areas can be fatal. “You don’t want to cut the muscle,” said Hackett Group advisor David Ackerman.

The report noted that the truly world-class organisation strike a balance between trimming IT expenditure and recognising the business contribution IT makes. Typically, these firms will have highly consolidated technology platforms and application portfolios.

The hallmarks of a world-class IT function are "architecture complexity management, centralisation, demand management and sourcing", the report concluded.

And while many companies look to outsourcing to reduce technology costs, there are pitfalls, warned Eric Dorr, senior research director at The Hackett Group. Companies need to ensure flexible contracts, be wary of high base fees that cannot be reduced and ensure they are adequately transferring risk to the outsourcing provider, he said.

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Microsoft may 'wake up' over end to XP

Microsoft may 'wake up' over end to XP but so far, they have no plans to keep the operating system selling past 30 June, chief executive Steve Ballmer has said.

If customers show they want to keep the Windows XP operating system, Microsoft could re-think plans to phase out it out by 30 June, chief executive Steve Ballmer said.

Ballmer said so far, customers have not expressed this.

"XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments," Ballmer told reporters at a news conference on Thursday.

Microsoft has announced that it will stop licensing Windows XP to computer makers and end retail sales by June 30.

Ballmer said that most retailers sell computers with Vista, the latest version of its Windows operating system, and most consumers are choosing to buy Vista.

"In the business environment, we still have customers who are buying PCs with XP" because information technology departments often have to work with old machines, he said.

Vista requires high-speed central processing units (CPUs) that are only installed in newer machines.

XP was given a five-month stay of execution last year, after problems with Vista.

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SME decision-makers pay too much for mobile communications

T-Mobile reveals 60% of small business senior decision makers spend a minimum of five hours a week out of the office, but many are paying too much for their mobile communications.

The research surveyed over 540 SME owners and directors across the UK.

The survey found 72% of respondents believed mobile communications were critical for directors and board members, management and team workers.

But despite the popularity of mobile communications, 42% of respondents said they paid too much for their mobile communications plan.

The survey found 77% did not have flexible price plans in place to help balance costs with actual user needs, and 65% had no mechanism in contracts to control the cost of international calls from employees' mobiles.

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