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Like death and taxes, outsourcing is an
inevitable challenge for every CIO or
networking manager. It's not easy to accept
the possibility that giving up a part of
your in-house IT or networking
responsibilities to a service provider may
be the most effective, efficient way to
handle certain tasks or functions.
Yet, in most organizations, escalating
budgetary pressures are fueling a renewed
interest in outsourcing, and a growing array
of outsourcing alternatives is being
positioned to make the idea more palatable
to IT and networking managers. In fact, the
outsourcing market is one of the few
segments of the IT industry that is
experiencing steady growth in an otherwise
gloomy business environment. Gartner Inc.
predicts that the IT outsourcing market in
North America will grow from $101 billion in
2000 to $160 billion by 2005 as corporations
and government agencies try to lower IT
spending and focus their limited resources
elsewhere.
Whether IT and networking managers like it
or not, they must accept that outsourcing is
a viable alternative that can bring cost
savings and performance improvements to
their operation. Before embarking on an
outsourcing strategy, however, enterprises
must first clearly understand their business
objectives so they can identify IT and
networking functions that can be
appropriately outsourced. They also must
obtain baseline data regarding their own
current performance levels, and benchmark it
against the performance levels of their
industry peers.
The growing array of selective out-tasking
services means today's buyers can evaluate
the business benefits of various outsourcing
alternatives. It is no longer an "either/or"
proposition, and you need not outsource all
your operations to realize meaningful
returns. If recent partnering agreements
between outsourcers and xSPs turn out to be
successful, the range of these alternatives
will continue to expand.
For the time being, however, the safest
outsourcing bets will continue to be the
established players—IBM, CSC and EDS.
Depending on your relationship with the
incumbent telcos, they also might be safe
sources, albeit for a limited set of managed
network services related to their core
transport services.
The "new world" xSPs are probably best
viewed as a breeding ground for new network,
storage, security and associated management
functions. You may want to try some of these
new services on a limited/pilot basis, under
the auspices of a stronger, traditional
partner, or wait for the provider to roll
out more fully featured offerings or
software packages. |
