Outsourcing
Gartner, 2/7/03: Sourcing Strategies: Relationship Models and Case Studies
Pushed by tactical problems, pulled by strategic trends, overwhelmed by sourcing complexity, enterprises struggle with their sourcing strategies. This Strategic Analysis Report provides the complete framework focused on the alternative relationship models available to implement a sourcing strategy, as well as some sample strategies.
Management Summary
While the current economic downturn and climate of uncertainty push enterprises toward outsourcing IT services for the tried-and-true need to cut costs and increase IT efficiencies, what is really going on behind sourcing decisions is far more complex than that. Sourcing is moving toward becoming a strategic tool for enterprises to evolve into the connected economy. Two trends are pushing sourcing to be strongly connected to the business strategy.
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IT Management
Computerworld, 2/10/03: Squeeze play: CIOs look to rein in IT spending
By THOMAS HOFFMAN
Having spent the past two years paring back staff, consolidating servers and storage equipment, renegotiating vendor contracts and conducting selective outsourcing, CIOs are struggling to find new ways to reduce costs without cutting into the muscle of their IT operations.
"We've done all those things, and yet management still wants us to cut costs further," says a CIO at a Midwestern bank who requested anonymity. "I just don't know where else to cut."
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ZDNet, 2/11/03: Corporate customers in the driver's seat
By Larry Dignan
While the economy has baffled industries and investors in the last few years, it has clarified some things for John Dean.
The chief information officer at furniture maker Steelcase says the high-tech slowdown has allowed him to evaluate what information technology he really needs--and what he does not.
"There's been a permanent attitude adjustment about what you need to spend," said Dean, whose company plans to keep IT expenditures flat for 2003. "I'm going to continue on the path of cutting dollars from the budget even when the economy recovers. I lived through it, and now know I can do it."
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Network World, 2/10/03: Sales pitch overload
IT executives are being deluged with sales calls from technology vendors every week.
By Ann Bednarz
A slew of states have adopted legislation that lets consumers who don't want to receive telemarketing calls add their names to a "do not call" list that marketing companies are required to honor. Unfortunately, there's no such remedy for IT executives bombarded every week with hundreds of sales calls and e-mails from software, hardware and IT services vendors.
"I've finally forced myself to start being nice to printer toner telemarketers," says Kevin Garrity, a network administrator at Trans-Lite, a lighting manufacturer in Milford, Conn. "For quite a few years I was as rude to them as they were to me. Now I smother them in kindness then hang up. I guess they are regular people who need a job, not the monsters they seem."
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Gartner, 2/7/03: Postcards From the Midsize Enterprise Summit
Attendees at the Midsize Enterprise Summit (September 2002) posed many questions and concerns about critical IT issues unique to their environments. Gartner’s answers can help midsize enterprises formulate 2003 IT plans.
Any Gartner event features dozens of question-and-answer exchanges, both spontaneous and structured. This Spotlight centers on questions aired at our Midsize Enterprise Summit, held in Chicago in September 2002. The summit brought senior IT executives together with Gartner analysts and technology vendors to focus on the challenges of developing effective IT strategies and utilizing emerging technologies. Questions were culled from analyst presentation Q&A sessions and private one-on-one sessions. The attendees’ questions — and Gartner’s answers — cover a wide range of hot topics of interest to small and midsize businesses (SMBs).
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Mobile
ZDNet, 2/11/03: BlackBerrys get in wireless sync
By Ben Charny
Research In Motion is adding wireless synchronization to its BlackBerry pagers, a move that puts the company in step with key rival Good Technology.
Most BlackBerry pagers will be able to use a cellular connection to wirelessly synchronize the information on the devices with that on a corporate computer network, RIM announced Monday. A representative for the company said BlackBerrys with the feature will be available to customers "soon"--perhaps within a number of weeks--but refused to specify a more exact date.
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New Media
Clay Shirkey, 2/8/03: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
A persistent theme among people writing about the social aspects of weblogging is to note (and usually lament) the rise of an A-list, a small set of webloggers who account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world. This complaint follows a common pattern we've seen with MUDs, BBSes, and online communities like Echo and the WELL. A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on.
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Secuity
Giga, 2/7/03: Market Overview: Privacy Management Technologies
Steve Hunt
Information becomes more accessible every day. Organizations deliver products and services in increasingly efficient and effective ways. But these great benefits of current business and computing practices come at a cost. There is a parallel increase in risk of disclosing personal and sensitive information. As a result, privacy, or more to the point, how organizations collect, store and use personally identifiable information (PII), has become such a significant public concern that laws dictating minimum data collection standards and penalties for failing to comply are already enacted in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe.
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Academy Award Nominations
Associated Press, 2/11/03: Complete List of Oscar Nominations
By The Associated Press
Complete list of 75th annual Oscar nominations announced Tuesday in Beverly Hills, Calif., by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (news - web sites):
1. Best Picture: "Chicago," "Gangs of New York," "The Hours," "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," "The Pianist."
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