IT Outsourcing
Gartner, 8/26/04: Petro-Canada Uses ITIL to Manage Its Multivendor Environment
Petro-Canada managed successful cooperation among its external service providers by using IT Library Infrastructure processes to define responsibilities.
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Gartner, 9/8/04: Management Update: Conduct a SWOT Analysis to Shape Your Sourcing Practice
A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis can help determine your best combination of internal and external sourcing resources to support your business objectives.
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Release 1.0: September 2004: Autonomous IT: Outsourcing Operations to Machines
As systems get more complex, we have to start trusting them to manage themselves; it’s simply beyond the capability of human beings. We can’t clone humans fast enough, but we can clone smart, aware machines if we can make the systems themselves manageable– by making their states and capabilities explicit. Yet there’s more to this than theory and technology; the marketplace comprises living, breathing companies with histories and tactics. The companies that control the platforms – notably IBM and Microsoft– are attempting to put more intelligence into the infrastructure, while those with less market power are mostly working on smart middleware to control the platform components from outside. But in the long run, all these approaches will benefit from increasing standardization, which will make everything easier to manage – and reduce any one vendor’s market power.
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Computerworld, 9/22/04: Siemens embarks on 350,000-user Exchange 2003 migration
It turned to Quest Software for help with the massive implementation
News Story by Todd R. Weiss
SEPTEMBER 22, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Siemens AG has embarked on a massive plan to migrate 350,000 users in more than 100 diverse business units around the world from Microsoft Exchange Version 5.5 to Exchange 2003.
The migration, which isn't due to be complete until the fall of 2005, prompted the Munich-based company to turn to Irvine, Calif.-based Quest Software Inc. for help. Siemens is a conglomerate whose divisions produce and sell lighting products, railroad cars, sensors and power generation systems. [Editor's Note: Of course, the Siemens conglomerate also includes an IT services management business. Hmmm.]
The Siemens Exchange network was built, division by division, with little worry about centralized administration, and was set up using more than 150 Exchange "organizations" for the business units when it was last updated in the late 1990s. Even worse, by having those separate organizations, Siemens couldn't take full advantage of its recent investment in Microsoft's Active Directory. That software allows users to share calendars, address books and public folders across the entire corporate network -- as long as the users are all located within the same organization.
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Infoworld, 9/24/04: Fiorina: Sometimes IT spending is a 'bad thing'
HP's CEO dismisses the idea that corporate budget surpluses will drive an IT spending increase Q4
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Not expecting a rush of IT spending during the last three months of 2004, Hewlett-Packard (Profile, Products, Articles) Co. (HP) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina said Thursday that IT buyers have become smarter and more discriminating in their IT purchasing than they were just five years ago, and that they now realize that technology spending can sometimes be a "bad thing."
"The reason I don't see it happening is because customers have gotten a lot more sophisticated about the fact that sometimes spending money on technology is a bad thing" Fiorina said. Customers who spent without understanding the return on investment, specific benefits or how their new technology was going to interoperate with what they already have were engaging in this kind of "bad" spending, she said.
Fiorina gave the analysts an insight into HP's acquisition strategy over the next year. Though HP has boosted software revenues through a number of acquisitions over the past year, including Consera Software and Novadigm Inc., it has no plans to boost its struggling consulting and integration business through an acquisition, Fiorina said.
"Customers are no longer willing to pay for very high priced bodies, and very extended engagements. The whole consulting industry has too much overpriced capacity. It's why I've consistently said I'm not going to buy a consulting firm," she said.
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Offshouring
Computerworld, 9/22/04: GAO: Outsourcing could hurt IT employment growth
But government data remains incomplete; more study needed
News Story by Patrick Thibodeau
SEPTEMBER 22, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - WASHINGTON -- A new government report indicates that offshore outsourcing could hurt IT employment growth over the next decade.
But the study, released today by the U.S. Government Accountability Office at the request of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, is sprinkled with caveats and qualifiers because government data can't provide a complete picture of the economic impact of the use of offshore labor.
At best, the GAO said, the data provides only "some clues" to the extent of offshoring activity in the U.S. economy. And while offshoring "is a small but growing trend," further efforts will be needed to understand it, the GAO said.
The GAO said government projections indicate that IT-related occupations are expected to grow faster than most occupations by 2012. Indeed, seven of the 30 fastest-growing occupations are IT-related. But the rate of growth for these occupations for the 2002 through 2012 projections is significantly lower than the rate projected for 2000-10, the GAO reported.
The GAO report doesn't say with certainty that offshoring will be to blame for the change in IT labor growth projections. It cites the recession earlier in this decade, the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and increases in productivity as potentially contributing to the changed job forecast.
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IT Management
Forrestor, 9/7/04: Modest IT Hiring Outside Of SMBs
In Q2 2004, Forrester surveyed technology decision-makers at North American enterprises. Only 21% of enterprises were actively hiring IT staff, compared with 42% of SMBs. Those most likely to be hiring include media, entertainment, and leisure firms — least likely, the utilities and telecom industry.
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Gartner, 9/9/04: Build a Decision Dashboard to Address Sourcing Issues
A decision dashboard indicates the role, perspective and level of participation that each party contributes toward making decisions throughout the sourcing life cycle.
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Security
Computerworld, 9/22/04: Virus knocks out Colorado DMV systems
The agency hopes to be back up and running by Monday
News Story by Linda Rosencrance
SEPTEMBER 22, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - A computer virus has knocked out computer systems at the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicle offices, according to a spokeswoman for the agency. As a result, no documents, identification cards or driver's licenses are expected to be issued until at least Monday, according to DMV spokeswoman Diane Reimer.
"Some of the staff saw something they didn't think was quite right and they knew that it was too risky to keep functioning so they shut the machines down," Reimer said. "We're working with a core group of experts; several of them are from the vendor. We're in the process of reloading fresh software and hopefully it will be up and running Monday."
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