Nearly there…..

There is hope that when your MP writes this sort of letter that the campaign by people effected may be getting towards resolution. Sterling work by Jody Clark and her colleagues, not to mention the over 10,000 people who have protested on the streets (many times) as well as undertaken reasoned, sensible argument for over a year. Simply put we are a community in one of the biggest counties in England that is growing, and scheduled to grow under government plans, and we should retain, deserve, and continue the A&E facilities that we had.

There have been a number of community protest marches, clearly voicing the views of the wider community. In all weathers they came and marched, thousands of people.

In all weathers – the British brolly persevering……

 

Traffic had to stop, but there was no frustration…..just car drivers sounding their support. Something that had to be listened to.

It brought together people of all race, religion, age and politics – for a common cause. Truly mind boggling……and a lesson to all the politicians.

And every Wednesday night there is a vigil outside our hospital as we wait to get the services reinstated……..throughout the year.

Parliament was visited ……..and MP’s consulted, including the secretary of state for Health, with questions being raised in parliament, even at Prime Minister’s questions.

Social media has been key so far for keeping the message out there and our elected representatives accountable. And the local clergy volunteered the biggest church in Lincolnshire to host a discussion group with the Trust at which media attended.

And now we wait….because on November 7th the NHS trust ULHT (United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust) will discuss the actions it is going to take. Nye Bevan, the health minister who set up the NHS after the 2nd World War has it spot on…..

 

SAP reveals more in South Africa….

SAP promised to reveal the results of its internal investigation at the end of October, and it seems there was fire behind that smoke. The South African headlines with “SAP apologises to South Africa, reveals truth over SOE and Gupta dealings”.

SAPs statement reads ““The investigation has not revealed any evidence of a payment to a South African government official, including Transnet and Eskom employees. It has, however, uncovered indications of misconduct in issues relating to the management of Gupta-related third parties. To this end, SAP has instituted formal disciplinary proceedings, in accordance with South African labour law, against three employees who were placed on administrative leave at the beginning of the investigation. SAP has been clear from the outset that it will not tolerate misconduct or wrongdoing.”

All credit for SAP for bringing in an independent team to review and more credit for introducing a policy of no sales commission will be paid in any countries where there is a perception of corruption score below 50 based on Transparency Internationals published league table of corruption which basically means that nearly two thirds of the worlds 176 countries drop into that category.

SAP Q3 Results are out…..rounding up what some of the press says.

The Register in it’s typical style, suggests some challenges “SAP reassures market: Cloud is sustainable, just don’t look at our wheezing bookings”

Whilst Reuters highlights below market expectations and the reassurance that Q4 will be good   “Just relax, Europe’s tech leader SAP tells investors, fourth quarter will be dynamite“.

The FT though focuses on warnings of the impact of the strength of the Euro on SAP earnings “SAP leads warnings on euro strength hit to earnings”

My POV – Q4 is always a strong quarter for any software vendor, it’s when the deals are made and the discounts applied. The underlying interest is cloud sales as a percentage of the SAP business and what impact it has on licence revenue. The 2 key questions being, firstly is SAP getting new revenue from the business that it is putting all its effort into (Cloud and HANA)? And secondly is SAP adding to the revenue base with service subscriptions? And the answer…..probably too difficult to say.

I don’t normally do this….but

Someone reminded me it’s Christmas in just  10 weeks….again. And the retailers have started their stocking of the shelves and offers are starting to appear. Also today my Facebook page reminded me that last year a local A Capella group released a video for Christmas. I watched it again and it was still as good as last year, and I wanted to see how many of you would watch it on YouTube. See what you think click here.

This could get very messy……

I mentioned a growing scandal in South Africa a number of days ago. Well it seems that now others are concerned that links with those either under investigation or investigating, might drag them in and their links to those companies are now being questioned. It remains to be seen how this will be untangled, but there are some nervous corporates out there. Standard Bank is now considering its links to McKinsey and SAP and also having conversations with KPMG. As the old saying goes “there’s no smoke without a fire”. Question is where and what is the fire? Everyone is keeping very tight-lipped about it.

I like the video clip…..

Every day we are all bombarded with marketing clips and then one comes along that catches your attention….in this case for me it’s an SAP one. My view is that this is slick and good marketing……doesn’t tell you that much but works exceptionally well as a teaser, and does what it says on the tin. It gets you thinking.

Click here.

A Celebrity and technology…..

There’s a great article by Gryff Ryhs Jones around taking care of your passport in the Telegraph. His concluding remarks suggest that like Pets we humans should also get “chips” because it would do away with passports, streamlining entry to countries. Perhaps a throwaway remark…..but it got me thinking.

Actually a chip could mean nothing at all, it could be replaced and it could of course be used to track you in many ways. But the solution of course would be to have the chip linked to something physical, and actually why not 3 factor authentication?

A physical object – the chip.

A secret known to the governments only built into the chip – probably an encryption key.

A biometric link of some sort stored on the chip.

It all seems entirely practical to me, but I can hear the civil liberties people chanting from the sidelines, but like Gryff if it was entirely voluntary then why not? If it saved me hours in airline queues, meant that I could get faster access at numerous events and activities that neede to identify you then so be it. Yes, the governments could “snoop” on me, but with nothing to hide what’s the concern?