Outsourcing
Meta Group, 8/02: Vendor Governance in Outsourcing
Successful outsourcing requires significant integration between the client and the vendor. The relationship must align technical operational procedures (e.g., change management) with business activities (e.g., pricing and contract management), and ensure service support of changing business needs. As outsourcing becomes a pervasive practice among IT organizations (ITOs), vendor governance (VG) is becoming a critical success factor. VG must be expanded to include global relationships (to survive mergers and acquisitions) and business process outsourcing, with formal methodologies followed to refine quality and improve consistency.
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Meta Group, 6/02: Full-Service IT Outsourcing: North America
Outsourcing often involves mission-critical operations, and vendor evaluations are often based on the “comfort level” of executives with vendor reputation and proven performance. It is extremely difficult for a vendor to overcome negative market perception. As the outsourcing industry continues to grow 20% annually, vendors in this analysis will likely garner a dominant market share.
Business Impact: Outsourcing can enable business to move faster, become more efficient, and sometimes reduce support costs, but vendor choice and contract structures must be carefully calculated and negotiated. Although all vendors in this METAspectrum evaluation are capable, each approaches the market differently and those cultural differences usually indicate a successful, rather than dysfunctional, long-term outsourcing relationship.
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IT Management
Computerworld, 9/9/02: IT watchfulness rises, but budgets limit change
By MARK HALL
Though IT professionals are now alert to the threat of terrorism, that threat generally hasn't pushed IT organizations to radically revamp their business continuity or data security plans, according to the results of an exclusive Computerworld online survey.
"I worry more about the Russians and script kiddies than al-Qaeda," said Alan Weber, senior systems analyst at Austin, Texas-based DS Associates, which manages human resources data for other firms.
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Information Week, 9/9/02: IT's Generation Gap
Older IT pros and their younger colleagues are learning to cope with different experience, education, and work styles.
By Elisabeth Goodridge and Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Steve Hieger manages two Leslies, and they couldn't be more different.
Leslie Lang is a 26-year-old IT-and accounting-support coordinator at Northern California Presbyterian Home and Services, a nonprofit company that provides affordable living for seniors. Leslie Wickliffe is a finance project manager in his early 60s. Wickliffe has logged more than 30 years in mainframe and systems support. Lang is reading Networking For Dummies. The two Leslies come from vastly different generations, with different social and cultural influences, technology training, and perceptions of their jobs, and they require different management styles. But there's another similarity besides their name: They're both valuable to 39-year-old network manager Hieger, and to Northern California Presbyterian.
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Microsoft
Infoworld, 9/9/02: Microsoft says Win 2000 hacking outbreak subsides
By Matt Berger
SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft has apparently gotten to the bottom of a rash of hacking attacks against computer systems running its Windows 2000 operating system, according to a security advisory posted late Friday on its Web site.
On Aug. 30 Microsoft warned customers of an increase in reported hacker attacks against the software but offered few details about the root of the problem. The company Friday modified its original advisory and now says the malicious activity has "lessened significantly."
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