INVESTMENT IN IT PROJECT WELCOMED - A project that began as a joint venture between NUI Maynooth and Intel today gets funded by the the IDA and Enterprise Ireland. Its aim is to measure the value of IT investments, and prove to companies that these investments are valuable, and not just costing money.
Martin Curley is Professor of Technology and Business at NUI Maynooth and is also Intel's global director of IT innovation. He says that IT is a very much under-exploited resource. He says there is a long history of failures when using technology for transformation projects like P-Pars.
But he says that with Intel and NUI Maynooth coming together a consortium has been formed that is pooling the best practices and leveraging the collective intelligence of large tech firms like Intel, SAP and Microsoft and large enterprise-end users like Google and Chevron. All of these parties will share practices so that the predictability, probability and profitability of IT investment is improved.
Professor Curley says the process moves IT from the backroom to the boardroom and sees it turning from a cost centre into a value centre. The project is currently only being funded by the companies involved, but today the Taoiseach is going to announce the first phase of funding worth €1m. The Professor says he hopes that will be a catalyst for more funding.
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MORNING BRIEFS - The machine of choice for the US military and those who want to show off - the Hummer brand - is being sold to a Chinese firm - Sichuan Teng zhong Heavy Industrial Machinery. No figure for the deal has been disclosed. When the sale process began a year ago, GM had hoped to make over $500m, but analysts now say it is more likely to have made about $100m from the sale, which is part of the company's plan to concentrate on a smaller number of brands following its bankruptcy filing earlier this week.
*** Next week European Union finance ministers are set to endorse a sweeping reform of the EU's financial supervision system. According to a draft document seen by news agency Reuters, the European Commission wants to set up two new supervisory bodies to make markets safer for investors by applying lessons recently learnt from the credit crunch. The first body, called the European Systemic Risk Council, would monitor any build-up of risks in the financial system that could threaten its stability. The Commission has proposed that the ECB should chair this council. A second would set standards for day-to-day supervision of banks, insurers and securities markets and its decisions would have binding powers over EU member states.
*** We thought Irish bank shareholder meetings were bad, but in Munich yesterday, at the EGM to approve a €5.6 billion capital increase for Hypo Real Estate, almost 2,000 shareholders fought the dilution of their shares. The board was booed, there were calls for their hanging, and signs read around the room read 'Hypo Fake Estate'. But it went ahead and the German government, through its bank nationalisation fund, has bought 47% of the bank's shares. These shares were worth €55 in 2006, this has fallen to €1.50.
*** US software giant Microsoft says that Windows 7, its new-generation personal computer operating system, will be available in October, ahead of expectations. This replaces the unpopular Vista operating system.
*** On the currency markets, the euro is trading at $1.4284 cents and 86.05 pence sterling.
