The documents appear to support Oracle's allegation that HP knew of Intel's plan to discontinue the Itanium range, which HP uses in its mission critical servers, despite telling the market otherwise, perhaps as early as 2007.

HP sued Oracle in June 2011, after it announced that forthcoming versions of its database software would not work with Itanium chips, which HP uses in its high availability, Unix-based server range.

"HP believes that Oracle’s March 22 statement to discontinue all future software development on the Itanium platform violates legally binding commitments Oracle has made to HP and the more than 140,000 shared HP-Oracle customers. Further, we believe that this is an unlawful attempt to force customers from HP Itanium platforms to Oracle’s own platforms."

Oracle countered that HP had known about Intel's plans to end the life of its Itanium chipset, and has been misleading customers by continuing development on the range. It later alleged that HP "secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is still alive".

Today, Oracle said it was releasing the documents in a bid to let customers "make your own decision".

One document, a presentation entitled "Extending the HP-UX Business", reveals the options HP considered for extending its HP-UX line.

The two recommended options are to continue selling Itanium devices until Intel ceased production, and port its Unix-based operating system HP-UX to Intel's x86 architecture, a plan in launched in November 2011. The two other options mooted, but not recommended, were to unite with Oracle "against IBM" by using Sun Microsystem's Solaris chipset, and to pay Intel to continue producing Itanium.

Also among the documents is an email, sent by Martin Fink, HP's senior vice-president of Business Critical Systems, to Kirk Skaugen, then the vice president of Intel's Architecture Group, just after Oracle made its original announcement.

The email reveals HP's desire to reassure the market about the long term viability of Itanium. "We've been told that we can't use the following line: 'Intel added that it at no time communicated to Oracle a change in commitment to the future of the Itanium processor family'," Fink wrote. "This is a MAJOR, MAJOR issue. We need to be able to tell the market that you never told Oracle about EOL (end-of-life) plans for Itanium."

An internal HP email describes discussions with Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei about licensing its Itanium-based HP-UX operating system. The email, which is dated April 15th 2011, states that "the biggest issue in [Huawei's] mind is the viability of HP-UX in the future. Intel specifically told them that the Itanium line is as end of life with two more generations to go. After that it would be Xeon [Intel's x86 server chipset] only".

"[Huawei] believe Intel is not telling HP the same message that they have been telling the rest of the industry," it adds.

HP maintains that Intel is committed to Itanium. "Intel has provided unequivocal and repeated statements to the marketplace that Itanium is not at an end of life. The undeniable fact is there is committed support for Itanium that extends out toward the end of this decade. Statements that Itanium was at or near an end of life are false. With the unsealing of court filings, the public can see the undisputed facts of Intel’s Itanium road map clearly showing a long and sustained future for Itanium.”

The trial will begin on May 31st, unless parties do not reach a settlement before then. Intel's CEO Paul Otellini is due to testify next month.

In November 2011, HP announced a new range of x86-based blades that fit in its UX-based mission critical systems, allowing some workloads to be run on the Windows operating system. At the time, IDC analyst Nathaniel Martinez was not simply a reaction to Oracle's lawsuit. "There's more to it than that," he said. "It's about the continued expansion of the x86 universe into mission-critical systems."

"High-profile data breaches and missteps involving personal data seem to be reported almost daily by the media," the report, entiteld Rethinking Personal Data: Strengthening Trust says. "The result: a decline in trust among all stakeholders.

"Individuals are beginning to lose trust in how organisations and governments are using data about them; organisations are losing trust in their ability to secure data and leverage it to create value, and governments are seeking to strengthen trust to protect an individual’s privacy."

The WEF voiced concerns that a loss of trust from individuals, combined with a lack of transparency, clear rules, and a rapid pace of change, might pull apart the "personal data ecosystem" that exists between government, the private sector and individuals.

The report, which was co-authored by IT advisory the Boston Consulting Group, makes a number of recommendations for restoring that trust. These include inviting individuals to participate in the dialogue surrounding personal data; agreeing shared principles on data handling; developing new governance systems to maintain those principles; and encourage organisation to be more transparent in the way they handle personal data.

It calls for the establishment of "living labs", pilot programmes that share their findings with data subjects and fellow organisations. The report refers to a healthcare project in the United Arab Emirates, called Weqaya, which aims to improve the health of the countries 2.3 million citizens through capturing data about "virtually all" clinical encounters, as well as behavioural data from user's mobile devices or home computers.

"Learning from such national-scale pilots can reveal how to strike a balance [between privacy and unlocking value] in the personal data ecosystem," the report said. "They can help create a more flexible and adaptable governance model than current top-down systems allow, [and] also provide evidence for the unintended consequences of well-meaning policy actions."

The WEF's report identifies 'inferred' personal data, that is "computationally derived from all the data volunteered and observed", as an area of particular concern.

"Organisations generally see the analytics and insights derived from inferred data as a proprietary asset," it explains.  "They have few incentives to openly share these insights. Although the inferred insights might be direct and intimately tied to an individual (or a group of individuals), individuals’ sense of direct control and awareness often remains limited.

"Inferred data has predictive capabilities that have become concentrated in the hands of a few large companies, the “6,000-foot giants” of personal data, to paraphrase physicist Albert-Lázló Barabasi, giving validity to the concerns of social control and surveillance from a few “really, really big brothers”.

The company is distributed 3,000 of its Chip and signature card readers in the UK as part of an invitation-only beta test of its payments technology.

iZettle is comparable to Square, a US based start-up launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. However, Square uses the magnetic strips that are still in use in the US, while iZettle's devices are designed for Chip and signature authentication, as is common practice in Europe. In the UK, Chip and PIN is the standard method, but transactions can be authorised using a customers signature, as occurs when UK cardholders make purchases in Europe.

According to iZettle CEO Jacob de Geer, conventional payment terminals are prohibitively expensive for small retailers and sole traders. "Everything from hardware to software to encryption all happens inside the the traditional point-of-sale card reader," de Geer told Information Age last month.

iZettle system uses a card reader that attaches to the mobile device (it is currently available for Apple devices) that encrypts all the payment data between the card and iZettle's servers. The phone simpy acts as "a stupid modem, [where] information from the card never touches the phone", says de Geer.

Like Square, iZettle distributes the hardware to merchants for free, and takes a cut of transactions – 2.75% in iZettle's case. It claims to have more than 50,000 users in the Nordics market.

In a statement accompanying the beta announcement, de Geer said that the UK is a "priority market for us and we are very excited about kick-starting this beta programme with three of the major card networks; MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club."

Earlier this year, iZettle hired Stewart Roberts, formerly chief innovation officer of Barclaycard, as its UK managing director. Roberts will start with iZettle officially in the coming weeks.

Yesterday, the ICO confirmed that its website has been subjected to a suspected DDoS attack in the last few days. "Access to the ICO website has been disrupted over the past few days," the ICO said in a statement. "We believe this is due to a distributed denial of service attack.

"The website itself has not been damaged, but people are unable to access it," it said. "We provide a public facing website which contains no sensitive information."

It has also been reported that the website of the Leveson inquiry into press practices was also attacked.

in a post entitled #OpLeveson, a group calling itself Anonymous Team said that the attacks were in protest of the Leveson enquiry's failure to prosecute members of the press accused of hacking, and the ICO's failure to crack down on personal data 'blagging' by journalists.

"The Leveson inquiry has become a farce," Anonymous Team wrote on its Tumblr page. "The Information Commissioner lacks independence [and] has repeatedly failed to protect public's privacy from hacking or data protection breaches."

"Anonymous refuses to sit by and watch this enquiry allow members of this government to commit serious crimes and for that injustice to go unpunished, for the citizens of the UK to be denied their Human Right to confidentiality

"Today's protests were about the failure of the Leveson enquiry and how this theatre has turned into a sham of justice," a spokesperson calling himself Winston Smith said in an online broadcast last night. "If we had a criminal investigation we could have had hundreds of prosecutions by now."

The spokesperson made particular reference to invasions of privacy by the press. "We have no privacy any more", he said.

The Performance Platform IT system, which is being built by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) and the Scottish Police Service Authority, is designed "to allow performance data from all forces to be accessible for interrogation and comparison across Scotland". A report from ACPOS said it typically takes seven months for performance data from the various forces to be compiled and validated for comparison.

The project was proposed in 2007 and was originally due for completion in 2010, but it is still not finished. “There have been technical delays with the introduction of the system, but elements of it are in place and under testing", ACPOS told the newspaper.

The total estimated cost of the project was £8.4 million. Around 65% of that (£5.4 million) was provided by Scotland's Efficient Government Fund, with the remaining cost falling to the individual police forces. According to the Scotsman, ACPOS figures reveal that it has spent £6.7 million on the project so far.

ACPOS says that it is currently reviewing whether the project still "fits with the requirements of the Police Service of Scotland".

The data centre, which is 25 feet underground in the shell of a Bank of England bullion vault, is one of four which Daisy operates in the UK, with others situated in London's Docklands, Southampton, and Jersey.

Daisy claims the new facility to be the "most powerful and secure data storage facility in central Manchester", as it comes with a 12-tonne bomb-proof door, a "bomb-blast" corridor, and two-meter-thick granite walls.

A spokesperson for Daisy Group said that there has been a data centre on the site since 1999. The company acquired the building in July 2009. The bulk of the redevelopment took place in the last 12 months.

Meanwhile, UK engineering giant Arup is preparing to move its self-operated data centre into a co-located faclity operated by by Vtesse Cirrus.

Over the next three months, Arup will migrate its existing infrastructure – comprising more than 500 pieces of equipment – from its existing West London facility to Vtesse's data centre in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.

The move was prompted by a need to expand Arup's IT infrastructure to support business growth, the company says.

Arup's primary concern in selecting a co-location provider was the performance of its resource intensive CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) applications. "Performance quality was absolutely vital if we were to consider moving our data centre operations from in-house to an external location – particularly one located outside of London," said Dave Thomas, Arup's Head of IT for the UKMEA Region.

Under the five year deal, 56 permanent roles will transfer to the Chinese company under TUPE laws, and 62 contractors will also be moved.

It is Huawei's first major managed services contract win in the UK. A spokesperson for Huawei told Information Age that the O2 staff that will move to Huawei will form the basis of a core network planning and implementation managed services capability in the UK.

Huawei has made a concerted push to establish itself in the UK market in recent years.

In 2010, it opened a security testing centre in Oxfordshire to certify its products for use in national critical infrastructure, and in 2011 appointed former UK government CIO John Suffolk as its chief information security officer.  Huawei also appointed Sir Andrew Cahn, former chairman of UK Trade & Industry, to its advisory board.

In January 2012, it acquired the Centre for Integrated Photonics, a research lab based in Ispwich's Adastral Park.

In March, it announced a partnership with energy meter manufacturer Landis+Gyr to develop a "universal communications hub" for smart meter implementations, with the initial goal of targetting the UK's smart meter roll-out.
 
In the US, however, Huawei's progress has been hampered by security concerns. US-based acquisitions and contract wins have been blocked due to the company's alleged links to the People's Liberation Army in China – links Huawei firmly denies.

Last week, O2 reported a 6% decline in first-quarter revenues, down €1.7 billion, and 33% drop in profits to €334 million. The company experienced a steep decline in voice traffic and reveneus, for which a gradual rise in data services revenue failed to compensate.

Those contracts reflected Serco's diverse range of offerings, ranging from ferry services to the Shetland Islands to accomodation for asylum seekers, but also its growing stature as an IT outsourcing provider.

The company won around $200 million (£125 million) of IT outsourcing contracts in the US, for example. Those included a $7 million contract with the US Air Force to provide IT services in support of the Air Force's NexGen enterprise transformation programme, and renewed with the US Navy for the upkeep and management of its undersea surveillance system.

In the UK, Serco will provide a shared services centre for all NHS organisations in the new Midlands and East Strategic Health Authority, providing middle and back office support in the form of IT services, contract and risk management. Worth about £30 million a year, it is Serco's first shared services contract in the UK health sector.

One of the largest contracts will see Serco will take over all customer services for UK home and online retailer Shop Direct. The deal is worth an estimated £430 million over ten years, the company said.

Serco also announced a £31 million contract for the provision of customer services to the State Bank of India. Serco will manage 1,800 employees handling sales and customer enquiries through email, phone and web chat. 

The company reiterated its warning to investors that "performance in the first half will reflect the challenging environment in the US and some remaining UK headwinds". However, "the strength of recent contract awards and progress on operational efficiencies reinforce a strong second half and confidence in achieving full-year expectations".

"The start of the year has been pleasing, with a number of significant contract awards," said CEO Christopher Hyman. "I am ... delighted with the excellent wins and strategic positioning of our global BPO business, which further underlines our confidence for Serco's portfolio to sustain attractive growth well into the future."

There were signs that the adoption of smartphones, and therefore the increasing use of mobile data services, is proving damaging for the company.

O2's voice revenues fell by 16% year-on-year, down to €789 million. Voice traffic dropped by 6%, with 12.2 billion minutes of calls made over the O2 network in the quarter, down from 13.5 billion in Q1 2011.

Meanwhile total data services revenue, which includes revenue from text messages and mobile Internet services, rose by just 1.2% to €720 million. Within that, "Non-SMS" data revenue rose 17.3% to around €310 million euros.

Extrapolating these growth rates into the future, it would not be until 2016 that O2's combined voice and data revenues began to grow again, and not until 2020 that they grew to above today's level.

O2's 1Q voice and data services revenues (€m, '11 - '12 real; '13 - '20 extrapolated)

Little wonder O2 is trying to diversify. In its financial statement, the company said that "new business revenues" grew by 35% year-on-year. These include its healthcare business division, O2 Health, and its newly launched mobile wallet service O2 Wallet.

The decline in revenue was accompanied by rising costs, as O2 made efforts to retain its customer base. The result was a 33% year-on-year drop in profits for the Telefónica-owned telco, down to €334 million.

O2 held the exclusive rights to sell Apple's iPhone on contract up until October 2009, meaning that many customers who started two year contracts around that time are now free to join other networks.