Outsourcing
The Register, 1/19/04: Gershon 'not comfortable' with reliance on EDS
By Drew Cullen
The head of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)has told MPs that he is "not comfortable" with the government's reliance on EDS for IT services.
Speaking before the Treasury sub-committee on Friday (Jan 16), Sir Peter Gershon, said the OGC had talked to the likes of CSC and IBM to encourage them to bid for big public sector contracts, as an alternative to EDS, Kablenet reports.
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Infoworld, 1/16/04: The secrets of outsourcing success
From IM to on-site staff, communication is critical — and flexibility doesn't hurt
By Ephraim Schwartz
To that end I spoke with Arkadiy Dobkin, CEO of Epam Systems, an outsource provider in Minsk, Belarus; Abnash Singh, executive vice president of Vmoksha Technologies, an outsourcer based in Bangalore, India; and Michael Akselrod, senior vice president for research at Reuters, an Epam customer in New York.Akselrod stresses that his opinions are his own and do not represent those of Reuters.
IT project assignments at Reuters are unpredictable, and the company would benefit from a model that would save it from hiring people at peak, only to end up with little for them to do when business slows. Still, Akselrod was skeptical of using outsourcers that were thousands of miles away but Epam's model made it work for him.
The biggest problem in dealing with a remote supplier, especially in IT, is communications
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Computerworld, 1/16/04: Sears plans to outsource part of IT infrastructure
Other major initiatives focus on point-of-sale systems and merchandising applications
Story by Carol Sliwa
Sears, Roebuck and Co. in March plans to strike a deal to outsource a substantial portion of the technical infrastructure that its IT department currently maintains.
The outsourcing decision is one of several key IT deals that the retailer plans to finalize early this year to help reduce costs, improve margins and drive up sales, CIO Gary Kelly disclosed at the National Retail Federation conference here earlier this week.
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C|net, 1/16/04: IT industry watches Iowa
By Declan McCullagh
Democratic candidates have remained relatively quiet on technology as the presidential primaries get underway this week, but the recent controversy over offshoring could provide a catalyst to raise the profile of high-tech concerns in the campaign.
The flow of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas has been a recurring theme of the Democratic debates leading up to Monday's Iowa caucuses and next week's New Hampshire primary, in a jab at President George W. Bush. As a result, lobbyists are closely tracking the positions of Democratic candidates on offshoring, which many companies argue is necessary to preserve their competitiveness.
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C|net, 1/16/04: Nokia calls on IBM for outsourcing deal
By Dinesh C. Sharma
Nokia has signed an agreement with IBM under which Big Blue will run the handset maker's help desk operations and support its desktop PCs.
The deal is worth about 200 million euros ($251 million) over five years, with Nokia following a "pay per use" model for help desk, call center and software support for its 57,000 employees around the globe. About 430 of Nokia's employees in a number of countries will join IBM as part of the agreement, which was announced Friday.
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Future Forward
The San José Mercury News, 1/19/04: What's coming our way this year?
By Mike Langberg
If Silicon Valley capitalists have any ability to predict the future, an open question after the Internet and telecommunications debacle of 2000, then we're heading into a very interesting year.
Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Redwood City is betting life will be discovered on Mars.
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IT Management
Internetnews.com, 1/16/04: Report: Users Giving up on their Desktops
By Sharon Gaudin
Say good-bye to your desktop.
By 2006, only 45 percent of corporate users are expected to consider their desktop to be their primary information device, according to a new report from Meta Group, Inc., an industry analyst firm based in Stamford, Conn.
The laptop will be making a surge in the next few years. Meta analysts predict that 40 percent of users will be primarily using a laptop or tablet PC. And another 15 percent will be using a thin-client or hand-held device.
As users become loss fixated on their desktop, they will turn to multiple devices to keep them connected to business contacts, as well as family and friends. One device simply won't be enough.
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Optimism
The New York Times, 1/19/04: Brighter Tech Outlook
Signs of a brighter outlook for the information technology industry are everywhere — in the robust earnings reports that Intel, I.B.M. and other companies delivered last week, and in the latest corporate spending index figures from the Wendover-Global Insight quarterly survey of roughly 30,000 businesses.
The index, which measures the intention of information technology purchasing executives to invest in new capital projects, rose 25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003, compared with the third quarter. It was the second consecutive quarter-to-quarter increase and the first time since the fourth quarter of 2000 that the index measured a year-over-year quarterly increase.
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