The key to a successful outsourcing relationship is identifying a partner who can provide cost-effective solutions with the relevant resources and the ability to adjust services as business changes over time. Outsourcing decisions should be made by examining whether an organization is effective and efficient in providing a function that is strategic to the business.
IT operations and support organizations are often viewed as an overhead that provides a commodity function that can be easily and safely outsourced. However, IT operations and support functions may be core capabilities because flexible, stable and reliable operations are the foundation for enterprise applications and business processes.
IT operations outsourcing proposals are often evaluated and executed with inadequate information about services and costs. The result may be an agreement that does not define the full set of services required, does not result in expected cost savings, and requires retaining a significant number of internal staff to close service gaps and monitor the outsourcer. Good business decisions are based on understanding services and costs, the impact of change, and the risk associated with IT services that do not meet business requirements.
What Should Be Outsourced? Data center outsourcing services are one of the most mature IT service categories available in the market. In a mature market, one should expect external service providers (ESPs’) to understand market dynamics — as well as client’s wants and needs — and invest in making their services better, faster and less expensive. No “one size fits all” exists for outsourcing. The build-or-buy decision will be based on different criteria for different organizations.
Sourcing decisions may also be influenced to a great extent by factors such as politics and culture and economic stability. Therefore a long-term decision — typically, five to 10 years requires an ability to align IT with business goals, identify gaps in IT capabilities, understand the capabilities available in the market and determine how in-house and supplier responsibilities can best be shared.
When deciding on a sourced solution, you’ll obviously want to select a leading provider for technology support services (for the enterprise). As a diverse end-to-end IT solutions provider, CSS provides flexible, customized solutions tailor-made to meet specific requirements.
Many IT outsourcing companies provide a complete portfolio of infrastructure management solutions and support services for geographically distributed network resources. The infrastructure management solutions are based on an architecture that is open and scalable – thus enabling easy integration of vendor or customer-supplied tools. A reputable solution provides infrastructure management solutions for a broad spectrum of servers, storage, networks, security, databases, desktops, and applications. By automating corrective actions, IT organizations decrease problem resolution time and improve system availability and reduce downtime.
Finally, when picking a vendor, it is important that all processes and systems are exclusively tuned to support your company’s operations – preferably with extensive simulation labs and a resolution focused environment. The “sourcing centers” should be dedicated to provide the superior support services required to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.
In the end, the model you choose should provide flexibility, and ensure a high quality service, cost savings, localization and reduced risk. Enterprises software and IT process improvements should be implemented by aligning your internal practices to industry best practices and standard frameworks, such as CMM/CMMi, ITIL, RUP, ISO, SAS 70, COPC and BS 7799.
