Outsourcing
Comptuerworld, 9/2/02: Outsourcing Configuration Management: Where Service Providers Fit
By ROBERT L. MITCHELL
Rather than face the problems of managing distributed desktops, many IT organizations outsource some functions, such as help desk or hardware break/fix assistance. But does outsourcing all elements of configuration management make sense? "We've seen very few clients who have been successful [with outsourcing everything]. The monitoring, the remote control, that makes sense. But outsourcers can't solve the politics around eliminating complexity," says Ronni Colville, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.
[more]
Computerworld, 9/2/02: Outsourcing Overhauls
How to renegotiate troubled relationships and live happily until a contract's end.
By MELISSA SOLOMON
After three years at Johns Manville Corp., Tom Rideout has accumulated his share of war stories.
He was recruited by the $2 billion Denver-based building materials supplier in 1999 to manage some IT outsourcing contracts that were already in place. Bad blood between the internal IT department and the vendors of those contracts had been brewing for years. It was Rideout's job to make things right.
[more]
Computerworld, 9/2/02:
Creating the Contract
By MELISSA SOLOMON
1. Work with a reasonable-size contract. Signing a standard three- to five-page vendor contract can be the kiss of death, but a contract the size of a phone book can be just as damaging.
In an old contract between National Steel and SHL Systemhouse, there were 500 service levels, which jacked up costs and took a long time to track, says John Davis, vice president of IT at National. Now, under a contract with EDS, he works with about 40 performance indicators - about the same number he tracked when IT was run in-house.
[more]
IT Consulting
Infoworld, 9/3/02: Consultant canons
I'VE SPENT A lot of time in recent weeks thinking about the role of consultants in IT and business in general.
Every CTO has one and usually several stories about an enterprise software product or custom integration project that began with a slide show that pushed the very limits of PowerPoint. The solution looked good in the demo, all business and technical questions were answered satisfactorily during the sales process, and the sales engineer was sharp and seemed to get it. Everything seemed perfect and the deal was inked.
[more]
IBM
Reuters, 9/3/02: IBM job cuts loom after PwC acquisition
About 4,000 people are likely to lose their jobs as IBM completes its acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting arm, according to a report.
It has not been determined how many will come from the PwC consulting group, which has about 30,000 workers, The Wall Street Journal reported online Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
[more]
Microsoft
The Register, 9/3/02: MS Outlook digital sigs easily forged
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Digital signatures can easily be forged and therefore can't be trusted in Outlook because of the same certificate chaining issue plaguing Internet Explorer, researcher Mike Benham says.
Benham is responsible for discovering and publicizing the IE debacle, where SSL certs can be signed by an untrusted intermediary without warning to the end user, as we reported earlier.
[more]
8:15:06 AM 
|
