Outsourcing
Gartner, 6/9/04: Management Update: Outsourcing Market View, What the Future Holds
The outsourcing market is poised for change. A view of potential market scenarios for how enterprises will outsource reveals that they will need to examine their expectations and possibly change priorities.
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The highly complex, multiyear IT projects are still found in megadeals, but for the average enterprise, the rise of shorter-term “selective” outsourcing will give way to a best-of-breed approach as business units influence outsourcing choices to a greater degree. The need for best-in-class ITO and BPO for business impact — in some cases, hosted outside of their enterprises in “utilities” — drives this shift in buyers and influencers.
Utility computing is the “wild card” in the future of outsourcing. Although the flexibility of utilities in terms of pricing, scalability and “asset-light” business benefits will be promising, this new paradigm of the utility model will pose increasing challenges for the CIO and IS organization regarding integration, migration and vendor management. Standardization into utilities theoretically increases the ease of switching service providers, which is a new challenge for outsourcers in the “brave new world” of utility-based outsourcing.
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Gartner, 5/10/04: Sarbanes-Oxley Changes the Rules for ESPs
Sarbanes-Oxley, the corporate financial reform bill, reshapes how U.S. private, public and nonprofit organizations do business and presents an opportunity for external service providers to renew double-digit growth.
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IT Management
Gartner, 6/8/04: How can midsize businesses justify IT investments?
Many midsize-business (MSB) CIOs report great difficulty in justifying IT investments internally. Many say that business executives in their enterprises are reluctant to invest in IT at all. A particular challenge is obtaining funding for IT infrastructure upgrades (that is, desktop, server and network upgrades).
Selling IT investments to business management is a challenge for most CIOs. It is even more difficult for CIOs in MSBs, where IT funding is more scarce. In many cases, the CIO's difficulty selling IT investments to management results from a handful of factors, which can be addressed by using five key justification techniques.
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Offshoring
Reuters, 6/10/04: New Report Says Outsourcing Causes 9% of U.S. Layoffs
WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - The bulk of outsourced jobs never leave U.S. shores, the government said on Thursday in a new report suggesting concerns over American workers losing jobs to cheaper foreign labor may be exaggerated.
Nine percent of non-seasonal U.S. layoffs in the first quarter were due to outsourcing, but less than a third of the work was sent overseas, the U.S. Labor Department said in releasing new figures on mass layoffs and outsourcing.
"In more than seven out of 10 cases, the work activities were reassigned to places elsewhere in the U.S.," the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its report on mass layoffs for the January-to-March period.
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Security
Internetnews.com, 6/10/04: Zero-Day Exploit Targets IE Flaws
By Ryan Naraine
Microsoft (Quote, Chart) is mulling a plan to go outside of its monthly patching cycle to release a fix for two "extremely critical" vulnerabilities in its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser.
A Microsoft spokesman said the company was investigating public details of a malicious attack exploiting the IE flaws. "Microsoft is actively investigating these reports, to determine the appropriate course of action to protect our customers. This might include providing a fix through our monthly release process or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs."
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Hewlett Packard
ZDNet, 6/10/04: HP looks for a few good partners
By Martin LaMonica and Stephen Shankland
Hewlett-Packard will extend its partner program next week, aiming to woo more third-party distributors to sell HP's OpenView management software, CNET News.com has learned.
At the HP Software Forum customer conference in Montreal, the company is expected to introduce an additional tier to its multilevel support program. The effort is designed to generate more revenue through resellers, independent software vendors and distributors, according to people familiar with HP's plans.
HP is also expected to discuss two new OpenView products and outline a consulting service offering, called a "blueprint," to encourage customers to employ a modern, more cost-effective system design called a services-oriented architecture.
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Internetnews.com, 6/10/04: Double Density is Key for New HP Blades
By Clint Boulton
Blade servers from HP (Quote, Chart) will pack a little more punch as the systems vendor said it will unveil "double density" machines later this month, adding more CPU and memory into customers' data centers without taking up more space.
James Mouton, vice president of platforms for HP's Industry Standard Servers, said the move stems from customer requests to develop blades that focus on power and memory instead of the usual bells and whistles associated with the thin computing platforms.
The executive told internetnews.com the new machines, called ProLiant BL30p, will slide into the same chassis, but the enclosure will sport twice as many blades, which are thin one or two processor individual servers designed to conserve power and space.
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