A digest of the top business technology news stories from the past week.
Bruton calls on multinationals to increase local sourcing – €500m opportunity
Ireland’s Jobs Minister Richard Bruton, TD, has called on multinational companies based in Ireland to include more Irish companies in their global supply chains. Just a 5pc increase in spending locally by multinationals would generate €500m in the local economy in Ireland in 2013.
In parallel to this, Bruton urged Irish firms to show more gumption and endeavour to fit into global supply chains of multinationals – a market worth €80bn worldwide every year.
The call came as part of a series of initiatives driven by a new Enterprise Ireland/IDA Ireland senior management team established by Bruton under the Action Plan for Jobs 2012.
HP vows legal action against Mike Lynch and Autonomy employees
Tech giant HP has rebuffed a request by Autonomy founder Mike Lynch for transparency on alleged financial impropriety regarding its US$10bn-plus acquisition of his company and the tech giant has said it intends to bring the matter to the law courts.
Recently, HP said it had to incur a US$8.8bn write-down on its financial results for 2012 because of accounting improprieties at the company. CEO Meg Whitman said the Security and Exchange Commission, the FBI and UK police bodies were investigating the matter.
Almost immediately, Lynch rejected the allegations and accused HP of mismanaging the acquisition of Autonomy and allowing the company which specialises in enterprise search to flounder once it was within HP’s grasp.
Apple dismisses manager following maps fiasco on iPhone 5
Apple has reportedly dismissed the manager responsible for the troubled mapping software that accompanied the launch of iOS 6 and the iPhone 5. Apple is understood to have enlisted outside help from GPS giant TomTom to fix glaring navigation and landmark errors.
According to Bloomberg, Richard Williamson, who oversaw Apple’s mapping team, was pushed out by SVP Eddy Cue, who took additional responsibility for Siri and Maps as part of a management shake-up at Apple last month.
Energia in €33m deal to power local authorities’ public lighting systems
Energy provider Energia has won a public tender to continue supplying more than 195 gigawatt hours of electricity to power local authorities’ public lighting systems in a new three-year deal worth about €33m.
Energia said all Irish local authorities now have their public lighting powered by the company following its most recent public procurement win.
Via the latest tender, Energia will continue to supply unmetered electricity to all of the county councils and many local authorities in Ireland, including Cork City Council, Dublin City Council, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Galway County Council, Limerick City Council, Waterford City Council and Waterford County Council.
The supply deal will also cover public-sector bodies, including Dublin Airport Authority, An Garda Síochána, RTÉ and Waterways Ireland.
Cisco to acquire Cariden Technologies for US$141m
Computer-networking equipment maker Cisco is to buy network traffic-management software maker Cariden Technologies for about US$141m in cash.
Under the deal, privately-held Cariden will be integrated into Cisco’s service provider networking group unit.
Sunnyvale, California-based Cariden supplies network planning, design and traffic management solutions for telecommunications service providers.
“The Cariden acquisition reinforces Cisco’s commitment to offering service providers the technologies they need to optimise and monetise their networks, and ultimately grow their businesses,” said Surya Panditi, senior vice-president and general manager, Cisco’s service provider networking group.
The deal is expected to close by the second quarter of the 2013 fiscal year.
Daily deals site LivingSocial to slash 400 jobs
LivingSocial, one of the biggest providers of daily online deals, is to cut 400 jobs, or about 9pc of its workforce, in an attempt to return to profitability.
The company, which is second behind Groupon in the online daily deals marketplace, is set to make most of the job cuts in the US.
According to a report from The Associated Press, LivingSocial spokesperson Andrew Weinstein said all but a few dozen of the cuts will be made in the US, with those operating in sales facing the highest number of cuts, as well as those operating in editorial and customer service.
Weinstein said the job cuts came as a result of LivingSocial’s review of its global operations.
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Supply chain management image via Shutterstock
