Outsourcing
TechRepublic, 6/24/03: Ten keys to successful outsourcing
By Anthony Tardugno
When an organization is struggling with IT services or support of a specific system or application, there's a propensity to say, "We don't have the skills or understanding to do it right. Let's outsource it to someone who does." But the mindset should be, "We don't have the skills or understanding to do it right. Let's develop our requirements, service-level expectations, and associated metrics. Then, let's entertain options for how best to source them."
I know this sounds ridiculously basic, but if you look at the reasons surrounding any outsource failure, at the top of the list will be not defining requirements, expectations, and metrics sufficiently. Waiting until the period of due diligence is too late; you need to complete this process before going into the partner selection process. If your company is contemplating or pursuing outsourcing, these 10 keys can help you develop a successful outsource partnership.
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Gartner, 6/19/03: Use Benchmarks to Get Value From Desktop Outsourcing
Companies should evaluate deals with external service providers throughout their contracts by measuring cost and performance against market averages. But do not forget to allow for the complexity and scope of the contract.
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Gartner, 6/24/03: Outsourcing Is Now a Strategic Issue in Financial Services
Outsourcing is not just about cutting costs. It’s about allowing enterprises to focus on core competencies and spend less on managing commodity activities. Enterprises must be cautious, or risks will outweigh rewards.
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Gartner, 6/19/03: Satisfaction Varies With Experience in Outsourced Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Services
The satisfaction level for companies that deploy business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) practices is determined by how certain they are that the investments will counter known risks and threats. Performance satisfaction and quality of delivery, including cost savings, appear to minimally impact assessment of satisfaction.
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Gartner, 6/20/03: Mexican Outsourcing Lesson: Keep Key Strengths In-House
A Mexico-based financial institution outsourced many of its core processes — but none of its key processes — to ensure competitive differentiation. Its success could point the way for other financial services providers.
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Giga, 6/24/03: On-Demand IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Models: Pitfalls in Resource Demand Measurement
Colin Rankine
Direct experience with clients currently engaged in variable-usage, on-demand strategic IT infrastructure
outsourcing relationships
How are current variable-usage outsourcing contracts structured, and what are some of the key resource definition pitfalls to be avoided in the initial contract negotiation?
Flexible, variable-use delivery of IT infrastructure resource on an as-needed basis is an intuitively appealing proposition. Why pay for idle, unused IT resources when they are not needed? It seems fair and fiscally responsible from a business perspective, but the reality today is that in the vast majority of cases, the business model is still a zero-sum game. The intuitive appeal of on-demand resource provisioning falls victim to operational realities.
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IT Services
Gartner, 4/17/03: Services Fast 50 Short-Term Forecast
Abstract: After showing virtually flat growth in 2002 —the lowest growth rate in the past three years —the IT market is expected to grow slightly in 2003.
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Desktop Management
Giga, 6/19/03: Market Overview: Client Systems Management
David Friedlander
Integrated tools for client systems management can reduce error rates from data synchronization across management tools, help IT shops take a more proactive approach to client support, and reduce client management costs by 10 percent to 15 percent over a period of one to two years. Consequently, a significant shift in the client systems management market, which has been dominated for a decade or more by individual tools, is occurring as the market shifts toward bundled toolsets. Client systems management includes everything from configuration management, imaging, migration, software distribution, application management and application packaging to asset tracking (see Proof/Notes for definitions). The functional components that have traditionally been purchased and implemented separately are increasingly available in a suite of management tools, and offer enough functionality to meet the majority of enterprise requirements. Technology improvements such as self-healing and exponential increases in the reliability of the Windows client and server platforms have reduced the need for third-party tools. Additionally, growth in the desktop outsourcing market is driving consolidation in the tools market as outsourcers look to reduce costs by standardizing the desktop and rationalizing the number of tools used for client systems management.
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IT Investment
Giga, 6/24/03: IT Trends 2003, Midyear Update: US IT Spending Showing First Signs of Revival, With 2004 Looking to Be Up 5%
Andrew Bartels
One of the big uncertainties hanging over the technology sector is when a recovery in business investment on T will occur, and how strong it will be. Giga continues to project that total US IT spending in 2003 will be up about 2 percent growth on average. However, we now expect slightly higher spending on hardware, software and communications equipment, offset by lower IT employment and thus lower spending on IT salaries and benefits. We expect spending to pick up in the third and fourth quarters as stronger economic and profit growth in the second and third quarters induce CEOs to loosen the IT purse strings a bit. IT budgets for 2004 will show the first real increase in several years, though at a moderate 5 percent pace.
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Security / Wireless
Giga, 6/20/03: Cisco Offers Flirtatious WLAN Network Management Promise Than a SWAN Song
Stan Schatt
What does Cisco’s new Structured Wireless-Aware Network (SWAN) promise and what does it presently deliver?
Wireless local area network (WLAN) market leader Cisco has been under pressure recently because of some remarkable new WLAN network management features demonstrated by competitors at the Networld + Interop trade show in Las Vegas this past May. Among the more enticing features were the ability to identify the presence of rogue access points on a network and then to actually locate these intruders on a site building plan.
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History of Computing
Computerworld, 6/26/03: Inventor looks to DNS's past, future
By Stephen Lawson
Paul Mockapetris is surprised that the Domain Name System (DNS) hasn't changed more in the 20 years since he invented it, but he doesn't expect it to run out of steam any time soon.
The chief scientist and chairman of the board at IP address software vendor Nominum Inc. created DNS in 1983 and ran the first successful test of it 20 years ago this week, laying one of the foundations for the Internet as we know it. DNS is the distributed database system that reconciles domain names with IP addresses, sending Web surfers to the correct sites and e-mail to its intended destination.
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Charlie’s Angels: Full Thottle
The New York Times, 6/27/03: The Strained Family Ties of Three Athletic Angels
By ELVIS MITCHELL
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" is like eating a bowl of Honeycomb drenched in Red Bull — a dizzying mouthful of unabashed silliness that leads to an equally precipitous crash once the buzz wears off after the film's first hour. Still, it would be fair to say that the movie is better than both the television show that inspired it and its film predecessor. That's half a compliment at best.
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