Uptown Funk

BBC News has turned to Europe for its next provider of newsroom computer systems. It has selected Annova's OpenMedia software, developed in Munich, for a contract lasting at least 12 years. Of course, being the BBC, it requires special configuration, so it won't go live until 2017. By then, BBC staff will have had 21 years on the old system, the Associated Press's ENPS.

Like ENPS, OpenMedia uses Microsoft Windows at its core. It claims 50,000 existing users - including many of the Rundfunk-ers (including WDR - what joy !), ARD, SFR, France 24, RTL, Ukraine's TRK and TV Al-Hijrah in Malaysia. The BBC estimates it will save £4m a year when it's up and running.  The BBC reported to Parliament that ENPS cost £6.7m in the financial year 2007-8, so Annova has come in really cheap by comparison. One suspects that was quite a weighted factor in the BBC's typically exhausting list of 4,000 requirements. It's not an unreasonable bet that the tender operation, running since September 2013 cost more than a year's operation.

• Annova already partners with Mosart, the system behind the BBC's wandering robotic cameras, so no big change there, for collectors of man v machine videos.