Outsourcing
Gartner, 12/22/03: Outsourcing Incentive and Penalty Best Practices
The popularity of using external service providers has led to a wide variety of outsourcing deal types and numerous types of service-level agreements. These agreements are enforced through incentives and penalties. This report describes the best ways to use such contractual elements.
Management Summary
Incentives and penalties have been used, misused and even abused as a tool to manage IT outsourcing contracts — regardless of the type of outsourcing arrangement. This Strategic Analysis Report answers the most frequently asked questions about incentives and penalties, debunks myths surrounding them and provides a road map for their successful use.
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IT Management
Gartner, 12/23/03: How to Cut Your IT Maintenance and Support Costs
Spending on operations usually takes up over half the total IT budget, with much of the money going on support and maintenance. Following Gartner's guidelines can help you save real money in this neglected area.
Tough economic conditions continue to challenge enterprises to contain or reduce IT costs in an already tightly cost-controlled environment. Many obvious cost-cutting measures have already been taken, and the challenge now is to wring out even more cost savings from already stretched IT infrastructure and operations. Typically, 50 percent to 80 percent of an IT budget relates to IT operations, and a large portion of that is support and maintenance. Gartner believes many enterprises can make further savings in this often overlooked part of the IT budget. Gartner outlines a number of best practices that enterprises can employ to optimize both internal and external support and maintenance costs. These best practices are just as applicable to internal or outsourced environments, or a combination of both.
Gartner research indicates that many enterprises are not taking advantage of the opportunities to right-size or optimize their support services to their real requirements. This is often because of a lack of information regarding average price and performance data to determine if a "good deal" is being achieved. It is also caused by having insufficient data on an organization's "real" support needs. Gartner advocates two "must do" or strategic imperatives that organizations should employ.
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Giga, 12/22/03: Centralized Resource Management and External Service Providers: A Complementary Fit
Gene Leganza
Does the use of externally sourced staff fit better with a centralized or decentralized approach to IT resource management?
For IT resource management, the centralized model works better when augmenting internal staff with external help. The pooled resources skills inventory can act like a gas gauge of available staff. As long as the resource management function stays aware of the project pipeline and the available skills in the resource pool, talent, the shop can stay a step ahead of resource demand by turning to external service providers when a gap appears on the planning horizon.
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Giga, 12/22/03: IT Trends 2004: Organizational Design
Marc Cecere
What are the key drivers and trends in organizational design for 2004?
Answer
• Need to demonstrate the value of IT: Through inquiries and CIO Council meetings, we have seen significant increase in pressure on CIOs to demonstrate the business value of IT to their organizations. This has created a greater demand for IT metrics that link to business metrics.
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Giga, 12/23/03: Best Practices for PC, Laptop and PDA Disposal
David Friedlander
Question
What best practices should we observe for disposing of old PCs, laptops and PDAs?
Answer
Companies often fail to consider the significant risks posed by the IT asset disposal process. Aside from security risks, companies may face potential environmental fines for improper disposal of certain equipment, could be subject to lease penalties, and could run afoul of licensing agreements or other contracts. When disposing of used desktops, laptops and PDAs, companies must assess the information security risks, contractual obligations, the residual financial value of the asset and environmental recycling costs. It is essential for companies to track assets through the disposal process to ensure that security procedures are followed properly, and to maintain proof of sale or proper disposal.
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SMB
eWeek, 12/22/03: Avaya Wraps Up Package for Smaller Businesses
By Caron Carlson
Avaya Inc. has a new hardware/software communications package for small and midsize businesses looking for IT answers with fewer integration challenges.
"You could go buy four or five different boxes, log in to each one, administer each of them, and read the manuals for each one," said Saied Seghatoleslami, vice president of product management and development for Avaya's Small and Medium Business Solutions group, in Basking Ridge, N.J. "What's your probability of making something like that work? How much of your time is going to be spent putting it together and maintaining it?"
SMBs, which typically make purchasing decisions more quickly than large enterprises do, are a growing focus for Avaya and many of its competitors. Recent tax code changes and the trend toward enterprise outsourcing have benefited small companies, making them a more alluring target.
Avaya's IP Office-Small Office Edition is targeted primarily at branch offices with up to 28 users. The box, which fits anywhere that a standard ream of paper fits, comes with a built-in firewall, Internet access, wireless connectivity, advanced messaging capabilities and three-way calling. It includes a setup wizard.
In addition to making enterprise-level communications available to small businesses, the product makes it easier to add emerging capabilities such as wireless voice over IP, Seghatoleslami said. Companies can use whatever analog, digital or wireless phones they have to connect the system by cable modem, DSL, wireless or the standard telephone network.
Last week, Avaya also introduced an integrated VPN to its SMB portfolio, enabling small businesses to set up more secure networks without incurring separate VPN integration costs.
Components of Avaya's IP Office-Small Office Edition are available from a number of competitors. This fall, Nortel Networks Inc. launched an SMB package that includes updated management software; enhanced unified messaging software; and new VPN, firewall and IP routing features.
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Microsoft
Jupiter Research, 12/26/03: Driving Longhorn Upgrades will not be easy for Microsoft
When I was in Seattle last week, I had dinner with one of the folks on the Longhorn team and one of the things that we were discussing was the drivers that could create success for Longhorn. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and am starting to come up with some of the answers. First, let’s take a look at the strategies that Microsoft uses to drive technology initiatives forward.
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Collaborative Technology
eWeek, 12/29/03: Social Networking Vendors Aim for the Enterprise
By Matt Hicks
Having started beta tests and raised funding, a string of vendors are ready to launch new offerings in the new year that promise to expand users' business connections.
A new breed of social networking companies is hoping to make 2004 the year of making connections within the enterprise.
Taking a model first made popular for dating with the likes of Friendster Inc., the group of vendors is planning to move from beta versions of business-focused social networking into full products tailored to enterprise customers. Their goal is to help business professionals and enterprise sales groups uncover their network of relationships and use it to gain referrals and introductions that are more successful than the traditional cold call.
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