John Lamb's week: Holway casts his wary business eye

Computer services behemoth EDS is taking a rest this week after a hectic round of acquisitions that has included deals with Systematics, Unigraphics and Sabre.

A spokesman for the company was quick to quash reports that EDS is planning to bid £5bn for the management consultancy arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), following failed talks between PwC and Hewlett Packard last year. "We are taking a breather," said the spokesman eager to write off an article in Sunday Business as a misunderstanding.

Researchers hired by telecoms consultancy Schema have not had such a relaxing time. They have been conducting an interactive entertainment study of 6,000 European consumers and seventy companies. The survey set out to assess the market for interactive entertainment by 2005. Not surprisingly Schema predicts a huge boom in online fun. Gambling, gaming, pornography and multimedia are the most popular types of interactive entertainment.

The UK is going to account for one third of revenues, says Schema, and is already being regarded as the dirty old man of Europe for its enthusiasm for pornography. On a more practical note, the study advances business models that describe how content owners, carriers and service providers might work together and divide up the spoils.

It is not yet clear how many councils have met the government's July deadline for drawing up a strategy for e-government. Cynics were suggesting last year that use of a fax machine might count as an e-government activity. However e-government is defined, there can be little doubt that many authorities will struggle to meet the 2005 deadline for having 100 per cent of their services online.

From Tuesday help is at hand. Microsoft, Parity, Three Rivers District Council and ViaCode are hosting a series of briefings around the country on e-government topics that include how to implement a business strategy, understanding the government gateway and how to maximise ebusiness benefit through the use of digital identities. The first session is in Bristol, but you can also catch the road show in London, Manchester and Edinburgh.

The annual Holway presentation of the financial performance of software and services companies takes place on Thursday at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London. Richard Holway, who recently sold his analyst business to research company Ovum, is generally reckoned to have a firmer finger on the industry's pulse than most. That is why CEOs from nearly all the UK's biggest players will be in attendance to see how their company looks under Holway's microscope.

Last year Holway caused some raised eyebrows when he failed to mention application service provision as a factor in the business: this at a time when ASP was being relentlessly hyped. Can he resist saying "I told you so"? More importantly attendees will want to know the prospects for a business that has been slowing rapidly in Europe.

Undoubtedly many of Holway's listeners will shortly be grappling with changes in the standards that apply to the electronic transfer of funds between banks around the world. The massive sums of money that shuffle round the globe aren't moving fast enough or securely enough, which is why SWIFT, the agency that handles funds transfer is bringing in new standards in November.

In preparation for slicker money transfers via straight-through processing, the organisation will be talking about ISO15022, as the new standard is called, in Dublin on Thursday.

Launches next week include a new service called Synergy from Pasporte for channel companies that want to get into application service provision. Extraprise, the consulting company, will be talking about a new return on investment (ROI) methodology for CRM implementations. The Extraprise methodology is a tool for tracking the progress of CRM implementations.

No doubt fresh rumours will also be surfacing about who EDS's next takeover target is.