The week in quotes - 17 Dec 2010

Some of the IT industry's most influential figures comment on this week's top stories

Chief marketing officer of Zeus Technology, Kosten Metreweli, warned companies who do not optimise their web sites for use on the iPad about latency:

"These relatively innocuous increases in latency create a massive difference in the actual revenues achieved. It's not just the immediate revenues that are affected, but actually long-term loyalty suffers as well because they're less likely to come back."

Steve Wood, ICO's head of policy delivery, commented on the ICO ordering the BBC to reveal details of the licence fee collection contracts it has with outsourcing firm Capita:

"On this occasion the BBC incorrectly applied an exemption under the belief that it was not in the public interest for the corporation to release details of the incentives they offer to one of their contractors."

With Software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue within the enterprise application software market set to reach $9.2bn (£5.8bn) in 2010, up 15.7 per cent from 2009, Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner, explained why companies are continuing to make the move into the cloud:

"Initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organisations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread."

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, outlined the city's plans to lead an initiative called Smart Cities following its win of £2m in European funding to roll out new internet-based services to its residents:

"An innovative spirit runs through Manchester's history and we welcome the fact that the city will take a leadership role in this Smart Cities project which will harness the latest technology to our goal of becoming the greenest city in the UK."

Tim Daniels, TMT strategist at Olivetree Securities, pointed to the success of Atos Origin's purchase of Siemens' IT Solutions and Services division for €850m (£725m):

"Although it's a loss-making division, Atos has bought it for a bargain basement price. Atos has experience of turning around poorly performing divisions following its purchase of Philips' internal IT services business Origin several years ago. Basically, this purchase is a steal of a deal."

Armed forces minister Nick Harvey commented on the Ministry of Defence stepping up its cyber defences in the wake of Wikileaks-related counter-attacks and a Stuxnet viral assault on an Iranian nuclear processing plant:

"The threat is of course changing in extent and complexity, which requires continual improvements in our security measures and novel approaches to dealing with the more sophisticated threats."

Mark Darvill of security firm AEP Networks welcomed the news that Rob Wainwright, director of Interpol, has suggested that internet users across the EU get involved in the fight against cyber crime:

"Cyber crime has advanced and governments across Europe are upping the ante when it comes to fighting internet crime," he said. "For the EU Internal Security Strategy to be effective, governments across Europe need to unite."