Triumph and tribulation: a look back at 2012

While London 2012 provided a showcase for the very best the UK tech sector has to offer, the year also saw one of this country's biggest software names become embroiled in controversy. Stuart Sumner looks back at the highs and lows of the past 12 months

Mo Farah slapping his head in wide-eyed disbelief at the scale of his accomplishment. Ben Ainslie winning because his opponents had made him “angry”. Jessica Ennis winning a gold in the heptathlon with a personal best score. Teenager Ellie Simmonds winning four medals in the swimming pool, including two golds. And the marvel of the opening ceremony, with its five sparking golden rings, and of course the Queen parachuting into the Olympics stadium accompanied by none other than James Bond himself.

The Olympics and Paralympics were hailed across the world as a fantastic achievement in terms of their presentation and organisation, and were a great advertisement for London, and the wider UK. No less impressive was the technology that underpinned the Games and made the spectacle possible.

Indeed technology was given centre stage during the opening ceremony when inventor of the world-wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was put in the spotlight, a moment he marked by tweeting “This is for everyone” in celebration of the democratic nature of the internet.

Telecommunication provider Cisco’s network infrastructure underpinned the delivery of voice, video and data traffic for London 2012, which was relayed over BT’s communications services network to the people officiating, reporting, competing in or watching the Games.

The IT department of the London Organising Committee for the Olympics Games (LOCOG) won the coveted Outstanding Achievement prize at this year’s Computing/BCS UK IT Industry Awards.

The department’s mammoth task included managing and maintaining 5,500 kilometres of cable, 1,854 wireless access points, 30,400 laptops, desktops and mobiles, 200,000 hours of software testing, and 110,000 pieces of technology equipment overall.

Gerry Pennell, CIO of LOCOG, accepted the award on behalf of his team.

“It’s been a challenging and difficult project, and it’s because the team has worked well that we delivered. We’re all very honoured to win this award,” he said.

Away from the Games, 2012 has been a landmark year for IT in several other fields.

Telecoms

This year saw the launch of 4G services in the UK, with Everything Everywhere giving its customers access to potentially higher download speeds - nudging 50Mbit/s in ideal conditions - from the end of October. But with speed comes cost, with customers paying £56 per month for an 8GB data limit - which at optimum speeds is entirely used up in two minutes and 40 seconds.

And the service seemingly created problems shortly after its launch, with many EE customers experiencing a partial or total outage of 3G services in early November. Some users were still complaining of frequent dropped calls and poor access to internet services at the time of going to press.

The decision to allow EE to commercially offer 4G services before the competition was, not surprisingly, unpopular throughout the rest of the industry. Ofcom announced the £1.3bn 4G auction schedule in November, which could see further 4G services becoming available by next May.

Mobile operators O2 and Vodafone are expected to bid in the auction, and Ofcom said that any firms wishing to bid for spectrum must submit their application by 11 December 2012.

EE, the mobile operator formed by T-Mobile and Orange, was allowed to re-purpose its 2G spectrum to deliver 4G services, after Ofcom declared that “there was no material risk that [the benefits consumers would gain from 4G] will be outweighed by a distortion of competition”.

Public sector

The government launched its CloudStore in February, making 1,700 IT services available to public-sector organisations via the cloud.

In keeping with the government’s declared intention to use UK SMEs where possible, it used Solidsoft to build the facility, although the collection of services is hosted on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Eleanor Stewart, engagement manager for the G-Cloud programme, said that the initiative is expected to change the relationship between public-sector IT suppliers and their customers.

“We hope that this site will help us to make the big step change in the way that suppliers and buyers do business on ICT services in the public sector,” wrote Stewart on a government blog.

The government also published a list of 257 suppliers on the store, ranging from smaller SMEs through to major companies like BT, Capgemini and IBM UK.

The service was criticised for amounting to little more than a list of companies, which would appear to be of questionable value to public-sector organisations who could have gleaned the same information from a quick email bashed out by an office administrator.

Indeed an updated version released in April added the ability to make purchases through the store, so long as the buyer is registered to use the government’s eMarketplace platform.

The update also received criticism from the industry almost as soon as it was announced. Posting a comment on the site announcing the new iteration, CEO of dedicated hosting company Memset, Kate Craig-Wood, said that it appeared to be running on antiquated technology.

“The side nav doesn’t appear to work properly - it only appears after you search for something in the main search box. People should be able to drill down into a sub-set showing comparable services, not have to guess the right combination of search terms and flags to select.

Triumph and tribulation: a look back at 2012

While London 2012 provided a showcase for the very best the UK tech sector has to offer, the year also saw one of this country's biggest software names become embroiled in controversy. Stuart Sumner looks back at the highs and lows of the past 12 months

“As for constantly reloading the main page, that’s rather last-millennial tech! It is also extraordinarily slow. While I appreciate you’ve based on a pre-existing system, dare I say that the pre-existing system is a bit poor and you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”

Enterprise

Among the many acquisitions and technology IPOs this year, the story that really stood out concerned the decision by HP CEO Meg Whitman to call in the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US to investigate accounting practices at intelligent-search software vendor Autonomy.

HP bought the UK-based software firm in late 2011, paying £7bn. HP recently took a massive £3.2bn write-down on the acquisition due to alleged accounting irregularities. Whitman has vowed to pursue compensation for HP through the civil courts.

“HP now believes that Autonomy’s former management mis-stated Autonomy’s financial performance, including its revenue, core growth rate and growth margins, as well as misrepresenting its business mix,” said Whitman.

“There appears to have been a wilful effort on behalf of certain former Autonomy employees to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company in order to mislead investors and potential buyers,” she added.

Some commentators have pointed to the £7bn that HP paid for Autonomy as evidence of a lack of due diligence on HP’s part, with many claiming at the time that it didn’t represent value for money.

Mobile

The big mobile stories this year surrounded Apple’s long-running legal dispute with Samsung, and Microsoft’s release of Windows Phone 8.

In August, Apple was awarded £665m in damages in its patent infringement case against Samsung, in which it claimed that its rival smartphone manufacturer had copied several patents relating to its iPhone series. The verdict drew criticism in part for the role played by the jury foreman, Velvin Hogan. Samsung argued that a mistrial should be called because Hogan failed to disclose relevant lawsuits he had been involved in, and had misled the rest of the jury in their deliberations.

Hogan, in pre-trial vetting, did not disclose a court case he was involved in with a former employer, Seagate Technology, which led to his filing for personal bankruptcy six months later. The filing implies, but does not explicitly state, that Hogan sought not to disclose that dispute because Samsung is Seagate’s largest shareholder and, hence, wanted to punish Samsung.

The original verdict included a sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, which was subsequently overturned in October.

Microsoft launched Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and its Surface tablet in October. The OS, which runs in various versions across PCs, tablets and smartphones, features a tile-based UI originally dubbed “Metro” but then rebranded as “Modern” following a

A survey in late November from NetApplications indicated that only one per cent of UK computers were running Windows 8, suggesting a slower uptake than Windows 7, which was launched in 2009. However, Tami Reller, finance and marketing head of the Windows business, said early sales of the OS were way ahead of those of its predecessor.

Reller was named as one of two executives to take over responsibility of the Windows business following the abrupt departure of Steven Sinofsky, who had been credited with leading the development of both Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface tablet computer.

In an announcement that seemed to confirm Reller’s bullish comments about Windows 8, Erik Dithmer, vice president of end user computing at hardware vendor Dell, recently said sales of high-end, touchscreen PCs running Windows 8 were running “well above forecast”.

So what will make the headlines next year? Join us in January when we will be looking forward to what 2013 has in store.

@StuartSumner