Outsourcing
Giga, 9/25/03: Common Pitfalls in Outsourcing Governance
William Martorelli
What are some of the common pitfalls in outsourcing governance?
Conventional wisdom has it that the most common outcome of an IT outsourcing transaction is failure. While actual contract terminations represent only a small minority of outcomes, in frequent interactions with clients that are outsourcing customers, we have witnessed a pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction with outsourcing even while overall economic parameters of the outsourcing relationship are on track. One of the principal reasons for this is that outsourcing customers do not pay sufficient attention to outsourcing governance structures and procedures.
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Giga, 9/25/03: Outsourcing the Technical Help Desk Using Offshore
William Martorelli
What is the prospect for taking technical help desks offshore?
IT organizations are leaving few stones unturned in their search for cost savings, and many are making use of a growing array of offshore outsourcing options. One of the most recent examples of this trend is outsourcing the technical help desk (or desktop support). A growing number of offshore vendors are providing help desk services, and an increasing number of customers are embracing them.
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Giga, 9/25/03: Unraveling the Propositions for IMAC Services in the US
Robert McNeill
Who are the leading outsourcing vendors for install, move, add and change services in the US?
Install, move, add and change (IMAC) and break-fix services continue to be viewed as repeatable and commodity processes that are mature and nonstrategic IT services, and as such they are prime outsourcing candidates in many CFO-driven IT organizations. IMAC services are normally bundled into larger desktop, server and help desk outsourcing arrangements. End users shopping for IMAC services can benefit from leveraging an outsourcer’s economies of scale (multiple and well-trained field services engineers and agents) to gain not just cost efficiencies but also improved response time to end-user downtime, particularly in distributed organizations.
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Giga, 9/29/03: Managed Services Penalty Clauses: What Is the Right Percentage?
William Martorelli and Brownlee Thomas
Is the use of penalty clauses for missed SLA performance a good idea? What is the appropriate percentage of the provider’s monthly revenues that such a penalty should represent?
Service-level agreements (SLAs) for managed services typically entail a percentage of the monthly bill at risk for failure to match service-level targets. While most penalty clauses for managed services (e.g., managed hosting, managed international wide area network services) have historically placed only a token percentage of the vendor’s monthly revenues at risk for missing service-level targets, customers are increasingly requesting more stringent SLA penalties. In some cases they are demanding that the full 100 percent of monthly revenue for the affected site and service be forfeited for SLA violations.
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IT Management
Giga, 9/19/03: Taking the ‘I’ Out of ITs
Craig Symons
During the past 50 years, we have seen what is now called the IT function evolve through a number of discrete phases and accompanying nomenclature. In the 1950s and 60s, it was data processing (DP) that focused almost exclusively on automating routine back-office functions. In the 1970s and 80s, it evolved into management information systems (MIS), and the focus moved beyond data to information that could be used to help manage the business. Throughout the 1990s, the evolution continued moving into front-office automation and e-business-oriented applications, and the function became known as information technology (IT). Today, technology permeates almost all facets of business, and its time to evolve again. IT can no longer just support the business; in most global enterprises, it must become the business. Hence, it is no longer information technology, but business technology (BT), and the primary mission is about business enablement, not business support.
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Mobile
C|net, 10/28/03: Wi-Fi Here, Wi-Fi There
By John R. Quain
First your company launched a wireless network. Then you set one up in your home. What's next? How about having Wi-Fi in your cell phone, MP3 player, or even your digital camera?
If chipmaker Broadcom Corp. has its way, the Wi-Fi juggernaut will keep rolling along. The company recently took the wraps off its tiny, low-power Wi-Fi chip called the AirForce One, a technology that promises to put built-in wireless networking into all sorts of electronics gear.
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Microsoft
ZDNet, 10/7/03: Amazon checks into Microsoft's Office
By David Becker
Microsoft announced a partnership Tuesday with retail giant Amazon.com under which the software giant will add links to Amazon services within its new Office applications.
Amazon.com Researsch Service for Microsoft Office System will be a free download available through the Office Marketplace, a clearinghouse for third-party services and applications that tap into new Extensible Markup Language (XML) capabilities in the upcoming update of Office. Office 2003 and other applications within the newly designated Office System are set to go on sale next week.
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C|net, 10/7/03: Microsoft lays out 'Project Green' revamp
By Alorie Gilbert
Microsoft is linking the release of major new versions of its business management applications to the debut of the next generation of its Windows operating system.
The software company outlined the latest details of Project Green, its long-term effort to meld four overlapping sets of business applications, at a Las Vegas manufacturing technology conference Tuesday. The applications were picked up by Microsoft in its acquisitions in the past few years of software companies Great Plains and Navision.
At the conference, Microsoft also disclosed plans to introduce more software for product manufacturers.
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