Outsourcing
Infoworld, 1/24/03: Big shift in IT jobs to outsourcing predicted, But effectiveness of farming out jobs is questioned
By THOMAS HOFFMAN
AS MANY AS 35 percent to 45 percent of U.S. and Canadian IT workers will find themselves replaced by contractors, consultants, offshore technicians and part-time workers by 2005, according to a report issued this week by New Canaan, Conn.-based Foote Partners.
And though some analysts and IT labor experts said those figures, while eye-popping, may not be far-fetched, four high-level IT managers said the predictions probably won't apply to their companies. For them, outsourcing hasn't proved to be a lower-cost alternative to keeping IT inside corporate walls.
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Giga, 1/15/03: Outsourcing Midrange Consolidation
Service Management Strategies
Dean Davison
Due to cost-reduction mandates and long-standing promises of emerging technology that can consolidate midrange servers, IT organizations are evaluating outsourcing to accelerate midrange server consolidation. However, outsourcer capabilities are still limited. Indeed, outsourcing vendors can provide various consolidation services (e.g., physical consolidation), but they are also awaiting mature technology to create midrange “LPARs” (i.e., partitioning) and the efficiency they promise.
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IT Utilities
Meta, 1/17/03: IT Utilities: Shifting Focus on IT Assets From Ownership to Usage
Service Management Strategies
Stratos Sarissamlis
The IT utility model promises to expedite sourcing transactions for always-on pay-for-use services. Users should assess utility caveats, ensuring paybacks compensate for transition costs and incurred risks.
Through one-to-one relationships, outsourcing transactions aim to reconcile the scope of undertakings users transfer with vendors’ capability to meet cost-reduction, service quality, and process maturity targets. Negotiations take 9-12+ months to complete, in which parties seek a common understanding of the specific context and operating environment to determine service baseline, contractual terms and conditions, pricing and service-level agreements, and transition of resources. Furthermore, relationships evolve during the contract term, because in-scope services are subject to diverse interpretations and technology/business changes often compel parties to modify some transactional aspects. Indeed, certain contract sections become obsolete soon after the transition completes and service scope digressions are tackled outside the contract, often widening the gap between service expectations and perceptions.
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Giga, 1/23/03: Outsourcing Options for Niche Businesses
Richard Peynot
Niche businesses are increasingly giving up on the idea of designing and developing their own solutions and prefer to seek sourcing partners to deliver such a service. Companies unfamiliar with the variant options of outsourcing need to be aware of the types of contracts that may be offered. Models differ on infrastructure hosting, software access and software property, and this may have an impact on the client company’s business. There are also different billing models. As these models may be unusual and even complex, companies should be cautious and are invited to evaluate scenarios for each billing mode. Also, Giga urges “beginner” companies to involve a specialized advisor for contract conditions and price negotiation.
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IT Management
Giga, 1/23/03: Selling IT Projects to the Business
Margo Visitacion
Convincing the management of autonomous business units that IS project investments are warranted is increasingly difficult as project failures have hurt IS credibility, infrastructure investments don’t yield highly visible results and consultants and the press have raised expectations too high. Those pushing IT projects should use the following tactics to overcome these obstacles.
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Security
Computerworld,, 1/27/03: Update: 'Slammer' worm slugs Internet, slows Web traffic
By Stacy Cowley and Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
A new worm attacking a known vulnerability in Microsoft SQL 2000 Web servers that has been slowing down or halting Internet traffic worldwide could prove as tricky a nemesis as security foes "Code Red" and "Nimda," according to firms tracking the outbreak.
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