outsourcing - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• The Business of IT: Verify, Then Trust

  Offshore vendors can deliver more strategic value than you realise. Here’s how.

• Cost-Saving Secrets of the Outsourcing Insiders

  Sure, you could hire a big, expensive outsourcing consulting firm to guide you step-by-step through the IT services procurement process. They've got experience, off-the-rack SLAs and contractual provisions, and enough templates and processes to fill a large conference room. But not everyone can or will pay $300-plus an hour for outsourcing handholding anymore.

• What Matters Most in Outsourcing: Outcomes vs. Tasks

  Outcome-based outsourcing is the holy grail of IT services. Both customers and providers agree that if they can figure out a way to tie sourcing strategy to business results everyone will be happier in the end.

• You Can Outsource City Hall, but Not Offshore--Yet

  Public sector outsourcing is "in," as state and local IT leaders contend with shrinking budgets, limited human resources, and increasing demand for IT services. "There appears to be a perfect storm for IT outsourcing at the state and local level today," says Jason Khan, chief technology strategist for Washington, D.C.-based Touchstone Consulting Group.

• Outsourcing Industry Mergers Spell Bad News for IT

  IT services industry watchers say the question is not if, but when the next big merger between outsourcing vendors will happen.

• Keep Your Outsourcing Provider Hungry for Your Business

  More IT leaders are spreading their application development and maintenance work among several outsourcing vendors. Multisourcing, as the practice is called, increases competition, breadth of resources, availability and management overhead.

• ACS's IT outsourcing business could get lost at Xerox

  IT outsourcing industry analysts raise questions about the future of ACS's IT services business in the aftermath of its acquisition by Xerox.

• Tapping the source

  In response to pressures from economic crisis and the Gershon Report, organisations with outsourced environments are tackling the need to cut costs quickly. Here’s how they’re doing it. . .

• Slideshow: CIO Breakfast Briefing -- Outsourcing Efficiencies

  Australian CIOs gather in Sydney and Canberra to discuss how to drive outsourcing cost savings in the midst of the global financial crisis at the CIO Breakfast Briefing: Outsourcing Efficiencies -- Metrics, Models & Management.

• Outsourcing: benchmark your provider without hassle

  Savvy IT outsourcing customers insist on including <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/29102/Outsourcer_Benchmarking_The_Sanity_Clause">benchmarking clauses</a> in their IT services contracts. Benchmarking clauses are beneficial to outsourcing customers because they allow the customer to bring in a third party to assess the competitiveness of the outsourcer's prices.

• CIO Breakfast Briefing: Outsourcing Efficiencies - Metrics, Models & Management

  Many IT departments have been in continual cost-cutting mode for years, but in response to the economic crisis, they are being asked to cut even deeper and find additional efficiencies in their IT services and outsourcing environments - fast.

• With application outsourcers, fewer is more

  <em>Editor's Note: Accenture partnered with the Everest Research Institute to analyze the costs and complexity of managing multiple ADM suppliers and how the buyers can benefit from concentrating their work with fewer applications outsourcing suppliers. They interviewed leading organizations that have reduced the number of their supplier mix, as well as leading suppliers that observed the impact of supplier consolidation across their customer base. This article discusses the research and lessons learned that you can take away.</em>

• Outsourcing: Telecoms Give Their Networks the Boot

  When Sprint Nextel announced its plans to outsource network services to Ericsson earlier this month, the statement was notable for a number of reasons. Most significantly, by signing the seven-year, US$5 billion deal, Sprint became the first U.S. telecom provider to contract with a third party for network management. The move was an about-face for Sprint, which is known for its tight-fisted control of its networks.

• Outsourcing: How to create a transformation roadmap

  Most information technology leaders enter into outsourcing relationships with a reasonable understanding of where they'd like their IT services provider to take them-some point in the future where the state of IT has been improved by saving money, increasing efficiency, or implementing new enterprise systems.

• The benefits of infrastructure outsourcing

  The ever-increasing economic pressure continues to drive IT professionals to take a closer look at infrastructure outsourcing as an efficient means of filling their resource gap and driving business transformation. As a result there are a number of best practices in IT infrastructure outsourcing engagements that can help the process along.