In ComputerWorlds' Jan. 16, 2003 article by Carol Sliwa, Sears plans to outsource part of IT infrastructure:

"Sears is evaluating service providers for the outsourcing contract and plans to make its decision by early March. The five being considered are IBM Global Services, Hewlett-Packard Co., Electronic Data Systems Corp., Computer Sciences Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services Inc. "

Background information from BearingPoint expands on the possibilities:

"A survey conducted by the NRF Foundation and BearingPoint Inc., which was released at the NRF conference, found that 26% of the 57 retail executives polled plan to make outsourcing/offshoring a strategic initiative this year. The top three functional areas they said they would outsource are application development, integration projects and application hosting. Most said they would do so to cut costs and to increase the focus on core competencies, efficiency and performance.

'"In many cases, in data center and IT operations, the infrastructure itself has to be significantly upgraded before it can be outsourced and turned over," said Scott Hardy, a vice president in BearingPoint's retail division. He said CIOs assess what they're good at and then typically adopt a hybrid model, choosing to keep some functions in-house, some offshore and others "nearshore" in North America.'"

10:44:42 AM    

press release: Third Annual Telework Conference Shows How Telework Relieves Traffic Congestion, Increases Productivity and Decreases Company Costs.

“The goal of our conference is to give enough information, contacts and sources to our attendees to show not only why teleworking can help them, but more importantly how to implement a successful telework program in their company,” says NTTC co-founder and Executive Director, Terry Traveland. “Attendees will be able to return to their companies with the knowledge & tools necessary to start a telework program.”

The 3rd Annual Telework Conference will be held on Feb 3, 2004, in Dallas, Texas.

10:18:32 AM