Tag Archives: service

Shaking off the Bias Against Enterprise Hosting Services

At the turn of the century, that would be the 21st century, third-party hosting services that handled enterprise-class system like SAP were rare. There was a definite bias against enterprise hosting services because it seemed too risky to hand over mission critical systems to a stranger. It was also very difficult to make a rational business case in support of such a decision. Even more consequential, most people in the U.S. were afraid of the term outsourcing. There were simply too many unknowns and technical hurdles that could not be overcome at that time.

But that was then, now thirteen years later, managed hosting services are viewed in a much more favorable light. There are still trust issues and technical hurdles abound, but the economies of scale outweigh the potential problems. Further, the trust issues have been mitigated by the emergence of high quality security methods and tools that were not available 10 years ago. The term ‘outsourcing’ is even less intimidating now.

The cost advantages that third party hosting providers offer are driving much of the interest in managed hosting services. Hosting providers can spread out their fixed costs across all customers for things such as the datacenter building, HVAC, electric power consumption, the racks, the hardware and even the technical services.

This allows an enterprise hosting provider to fractionalize their fixed costs and charge only a portion of the full costs to each of their customers. This approach typically yields a lower cost to each customer than if they were to bear the entire fixed costs of supporting their own data center.

Cost savings would be irrelevant though if customers could not trust hosting providers to reliably support and maintain their enterprise systems. Trust is where the rubber meets the road. For organizations that utilize SAP outsourcing services, the mission-critical nature of SAP would certainly compromise the entire enterprise if their outsourcing partner could not meet their service level agreements.

Adding momentum to the resistance to ‘outsourcing’ back in the early 2000’s was the cultural notion that outsourcing meant sending U.S. jobs overseas, which is bad for U.S. workers. In 2004, economist Paul Samuelson (a Nobel Prize winner) wrote a paper that claimed the economic impact of outsourcing is similar to opening up the flood gates and allowing mass immigration of workers willing to work at extremely low wages. Obviously, the effect would be to drive down wages for everyone in the middle class, even if it did benefit certain employers.

Considering the incredible mixture of problems, tragedies, and uncertainty that plagued first 10 years of this century, the seed of opportunity for managed hosting and outsourcing was able to survive and grow. Today, nearing the end of 2012 and looking ahead into 2013, managed hosting is being transformed into something called cloud computing, which again puts the enterprise hosting providers at the center of a new trend.

Source: http://www.secure-24.com/shaking-off-the-bias-against-enterprise-hosting-services/

Did you like this? Share it:

Is Cloud Computing Ready for Primetime in Healthcare?

Is Cloud Computing Ready for Primetime in Healthcare?

While researching an article on cloud computing recently, I had an opportunity to interview hospital CIOs on their opinions of the cloud. Although the CIOs I spoke with acknowledged potential benefits of the cloud to reduce costs and foster more collaboration among users, they are taking a decidedly cautious approach when it comes to implementing it in their organizations.

Chuck Podesta, senior vice president and CIO of Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Vt., for example, says healthcare provider organizations will be “one of the last frontiers” to use the cloud. His main concern is around security, particularly with protected health information. Nonetheless, he thinks more organizations will take advantage of the cloud as security improves. He adds that one area where the cloud makes sense is imaging, because of the bandwidth requirements to share images.

Scott Whyte, vice president of IT connectivity at Dignity Health, a 39-hospital system based in San Francisco, says the organization’s move to the cloud has gradually expanded; he says Dignity Health has taken a strategic approach to the cloud, where the solution needs to be implemented quickly, is highly secure, and compliant with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. He describes a “portfolio approach” to the cloud, in which its applications are divided among the cloud, hosted by the vendor or as a SaaS, and its own enterprise data center.

In Whyte’s view, one driver in cloud adoption in the future will be as a collaborative platform. After all, he points out, most health systems in the country are not comprehensive systems that combine the health plan, hospital and physician group all under one umbrella. When one takes into account the different reimbursement models and care delivery models that will be paired together, many of these groups will need to collaborate, and there are advantages to being able to share and house information in different locations, he says. He says the cloud is able to foster collaboration between external partners in a way that can be implemented quickly.

Of course, all of the partner can expect that there will be an auditable process in place, and that their information is secure. That’s where the choice of a cloud service provider can either make or break the cloud as a platform for collaboration. He suggests that criteria for evaluating a qualified cloud service provider goes beyond strictly technology issues to “thought leadership, skills, and an understanding of the healthcare space.” To be sure, choosing a qualified cloud service provider is a bridge that must be crossed by any healthcare CIO considering a move to the cloud, regardless of the type of application.

Turn to the cloud computing story in the March issue of Healthcare Informatics for more on what CIOs and IT experts say about making a choice that makes sense for the organization.

Source: http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/blogs/john-degaspari/cloud-computing-ready-primetime-healthcare

Did you like this? Share it:

Google cozies up to developers with Google+ Sign-In

Google is making it easier for app developers to connect with users on its social network through Google+ Sign-In, a new feature that allows people to sign into third-party apps using their Google+ credentials.

The authentication system lets Google+ users sign into outside apps with their existing user name and password, and includes Google’s two-step security verification when logging in from a mobile phone. The user’s Google+ info is automatically pulled into the app with the tool, which is available to Android, iOS and Web application developers.

"It’s simple, it’s secure and it prohibits social spam," said Google+ product management director Seth Sternberg Tuesday in a blog post.

The sign-in feature is aimed at making Google+ and Google’s developer platform more widely used, while other social networks like Facebook and Twitter already offer easy access to outside apps.

The feature works like this: If a person is signed into Gmail, YouTube or any other Google service, the user can sign into the outside app with the same credentials. The person then lands on a Google+ permissions page outlining the data that the person is sharing with the app, which can be customized.

Google is highlighting Sign-In’s content-sharing controls as a major feature of the service. The functionality rests on the premise that users might want to share certain types of app content with some people in their network but not others.

People might want to share things, for instance, like high scores on a gaming app with the world, but keep other things, like data from a fitness app, to themselves, Google said.

The sharing controls are also designed to encourage more engagement with apps on Google+. When Google+ users share an app that uses Google+ Sign-In, friends will see a new kind of "interactive" post in their Google+ feed. Clicking on the post will take the person inside the app where he can buy, listen to or review what was shared, Google said.

Google+ Sign-In is also designed to simplify the app installation process across desktops and mobile devices. When Android users sign into an app on the desktop, they can install the mobile version of the same app on their Android device with a single click, Google said.

Google seems to be positioning the Sign-In service as an easier way for Google users to engage with apps and to better target who they are sharing with on Google+. The feature also functions similarly to how people can already sign into apps using their Facebook and Twitter credentials using those social networks’ developer platforms.

Still, Google’s Sign-In developer platform comes more than a year-and-a-half after Google’s launch of its Google+ social network.

Developers currently using Google+ Sign-In include OpenTable, Flixster, the Guardian, and USA Today. Tuesday’s rollout is an initial release, Google said. "We’re just getting started," said Sternberg.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-development/google-cozies-developers-google-sign-in-213545

Did you like this? Share it:

Global IT outsourcing market posts 7.8% growth in 2011

Worldwide IT outsourcing (ITO) revenue totaled $246.6 billion in 2011, a 7.8 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $228.7 billion, according to market research firm Gartner. Indian-based IT services providers and providers rooted in cloud-based services delivered the highest growth rates.

"Revenue cannibalization resulting from client adoption of industrialized, and often cloud-based, services risks muting the growth opportunities for the ITO providers that are heavily weighted in infrastructure outsourcing," said Bryan Britz, research director at Gartner. "Strategies will vary as clients are likely to pursue hybrid cloud strategies requiring providers to deliver some asset-light and some asset-heavy offerings — which will result in varying growth trajectories among competitors over the next several years."

IBM maintained its lead as the number 1 IT outsourcing provider, with a 10.9 share of the market. Revenue growth jumped 7.8 percent from 2010. H posted below industry growth of only a 2.0 percent for the same period but retained its position as number 2 globally, with a market share position of 6.1 percent. Fujitsu, on the other hand,  overtook CSC for the No. 3, with a market share of 6.1 percent, and 10.2 percent growth.

Gartner said 43 providers booked 2011 revenues of $1 billion or more. This group of providers collectively grew by 9.5 percent during 2011. After excluding India-based IT services providers, cloud-centric providers, and providers that made sizable acquisitions during the year, the remaining group of large ITO providers grew by only 6.5 percent during 2011.

"For many leading providers in the IT outsourcing market, 2011 revenue results demonstrate how challenging simply maintaining a market share position has become, much less gaining share — and this challenge is likely to worsen over the next few years for providers that do not address these forces," Britz said. "The challenges are likely to spur consolidation to augment growth, posing risk to the consolidators, because acquisitions have been a challenge in the IT services market."

Source: http://enterpriseinnovation.net/article/global-it-outsourcing-market-posts-7-8-growth-2011

Did you like this? Share it:

Software Design Outsourcing

Software outsourcing has gained momentum in recent years. Thanks to the explosive growth of software technologies that facilitated smooth business process. This resulted in tough competition among companies to showcase the best technology and produce the best results. Since software development requires highly specialized knowledge, most of the companies found it hard to run the software development process in house. This led to the idea of outsourcing.

By outsourcing software services, a company can better focus on its core areas of business. They can avoid running multiple servers to carry data and employ a team of software professionals to look after different IT processes of the company. Companies can simply get these services done from specialized and dedicated software professionals from countries like India. There are several services being outsourced in this manner. Web designing and maintenance is one among them. This is because of the complexities involved in running a Web site.

There are several benefits of outsourcing services like Web site design and maintenance. The main reason is the cost factor. To develop a team of Web design professionals, a company will have to invest in additional infrastructure, hardware, software and human resources. They also should have a research team that will carry out research analyzing the new trends and policy changes in the market. Also, there should be a disaster management team looking after the Web site’s hardware and software aspects, such as downtime and security. All these will translate into huge investment and additional burden on the resources available to the company.

Software outsourcing resolves this issue. By accepting these services, companies can save up to 60 percent of the IT cost. This amount can be diverted to other areas of business activity, resulting in more growth and brand reputation.

Outsourcing companies have gained significant popularity because of their quality services and high level of professionalism. With a large pool of highly educated software professionals. Be it managed hosting, search engine optimization (SEO), Web site design, which offer valuable services to their clients. By leveraging this potential of the IT services outsourcing companies, a business can earn the best return on their investments.

Source: http://www.designplusvision.com/software-design-outsourcing/

Did you like this? Share it:

Cloud computing IT outsourcing contracts triple

The number of global IT services deals with a cloud computing element have tripled since 2010, according to research from IT outsourcing consultancy Information Services Group (ISG).

ISG used its TPI index to analyse IT outsourcing deals and found this year will see 300 IT contracts awarded which feature cloud computing services. This compares with 110 in 2010 and 220 in 2011.

Stanton Jones, emerging technology analyst at ISG, said the move to standardised platform-based services which are difficult to customise is a step-change for the IT services sector.

“Cloud services, especially shared platforms, are a new terrain for providers and clients alike, as they are highly standardised and can’t be easily customised — the antithesis of traditional outsourcing,” said Jones.

He added that the greatest potential for growth and momentum is in software-as-a-service (SaaS) – especially for human resources (HR), customer relationship management CRM) and collaboration.

Jones said infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will lag behind SaaS in enterprise-wide adoption.

ISG said in earlier research that service providers reported that cloud computing is now a feature of at least 25% of their pipeline opportunities.

“Clearly, cloud is a disruptive trend in the enterprise and we predict this disruption will not only continue, but accelerate, especially for the traditional IT service providers.” Jones said.

“From well-known software vendors to more nimble mid-market players and emerging pure-play infrastructure and SaaS providers, traditional IT service providers face significant pressure in nearly every direction.”

In a recent interview with Computer Weekly, BG Srinivas, global head of financial services at Indian IT services firm Infosys, said the recession had driven customers to look for more flexible ways of paying for services.

As a result there is interest from customers in Infosys platforms as service. Infosys has a range of Edge products. These are platforms delivered through a private cloud. They are designed as a service for a particular part of a business.

Recent research of IT buyers carried out by Computer Weekly/Techtarget revealed that, in Europe, only 21% of businesses have outsourced cloud development and only 18% in North America.

Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240172190/Cloud-computing-IT-outsourcing-contracts-triple

Did you like this? Share it:

Outsourcing vs. Offshoring

This election has been predominantly about jobs and job creation. Companies are now taking public sentiment and reputation in to account when electing to use domestic outsourcing instead of offshoring. We have seen a public backlash when it comes to outsourcing. It has become a dirty word in the Unites States.

Paul Harty, President of Seven Step Recruiting, is an expert in recruiting. He discusses domestic outsourcing, offshoring and company reputation management. Outsourcing works for a lot of companies in a variety of situations. Harty is careful to note that outsourcing doesn’t have to mean shifting jobs overseas. The true purpose of outsourcing is to allow a specialized firm to handle specific tasks, tasks that would not be cost-efficient for a firm to handle on their own.

There is a difference between outsourcing and offshoring. Learn more in my interview with Harty below. 

1. What is the difference between Outsourcing and Offshoring?

Offshoring is simply one of many choices you have to make when outsourcing – and just one subset of the outsourcing process. The first decision to make is either a) to keep a certain company function and those skilled enough to perform that function in house, or b) to outsource it to a company that specializes in that area of expertise and is optimized to deliver that function cost-effectively.

Call center staffing is a perfect example. Most call centers are staffed with large numbers of people with similar profiles. Turnover is typically high and keeping a call center staffed often requires an ongoing hiring program that’s able to identify and bring on hundreds of people with similar backgrounds on pretty much a continuous basis.

Because of the arduousness of hiring and training, many companies prefer not to assume the costs and administrative burden of keeping their call centers staffed by in-house recruiters. Instead they “outsource” the work to companies that are experts at staffing call centers and who do it at scale. Only after deciding to outsource does a company begin to consider whether to use a domestic or offshore resource to deliver the service.

2. Why would a company chose to use either strategy? 

For most companies both outsourcing and offshoring come down to answering the very basic question of “What is the goal?”  If the company’s objective is purely cost-driven, then offshoring to a company in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) may be a simple solution. If cost is part of the equation, but the more important driver is “quality,” we’re seeing a shift to domestic outsourcing, where ease-of access and the lack of language and time-zone barriers make it easy to keep a close watch on quality control.

If there are issues regarding brand equity or reputation in the mix, domestic outsourcing is rapidly becoming the only option. For instance, a lot of basic call center work that was being done in India just a few years ago is moving back to the U.S., even though it’s usually more expensive here. Companies seem to be figuring out there is a direct hit to the cost of their reputation when American customers become frustrated with cultural and language differences experienced with call center representatives.  These issues weaken the company-customer relationship – negating the on-surface savings that were the reason for offshoring in the first place.

Another factor in deciding whether to outsource is the generally negative public sentiment of being identified as an “outsourcer.”  This stigma has led many companies to bring their outsourced functions back to domestic providers. They’re still outsourcing, but without the cultural and language differences highlighting the fact that the function has been outsourced, it can easily go unnoticed by customers.  This helps avoid the damaging hit to the brand, negative perception of customer service and political fallout, and if the company desires it, avoid public awareness of the use of outsourcing at all.

3. As an outsourced hiring agency, what trends have you been noticing in the hiring process? 

We are a recruitment outsourcing company that employs its people onshore instead of offshore.  At Seven Step we see a trend of companies bringing jobs that were once offshored to foreign companies for savings back to the U.S. because the cost benefits abroad are no longer as great.  Because the cost advantage has lessened, companies are now looking at their quality and customer experience and recognizing that the branding exposure and risk of offshoring may outweigh the benefit.  Therefore, manufacturing, call center and even software development jobs are now making their way back onto U.S. soil. 

Companies are likely to still outsource to specialty manufacturers, call center management companies or recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) firms, but would prefer that those delivery centers be based in the U.S.  Recruitment Process Outsourcing was one of the last disciplines of the broader outsourcing business to gain general acceptance. Today, most companies, especially the larger ones, or those that tend to hire large numbers of people with similar profiles, have some or all of their recruitment strategy outsourced to providers like ours.

Source: http://communities.washingtontimes.c om/neighborhood/status-update/2012/nov/6/outsourcing-vs-offshoring/

Did you like this? Share it:

IT outsourcing enables agility in natural resources organisations

The change in dynamics in the ICT industry has resulted in different methods of delivering IT and communication services. By being flexible and innovative enough to foresee these changes means cloud computing, IT outsourcing and telephony expense management (TEM), are playing increasingly critical roles for businesses operating in the natural resources sector.
The benefits of these services enables organisations to be more agile in delivering ICT services, while driving the effectiveness and efficiency of ICT services to natural resource end-users.

The inherent geographical spread of natural resources organisations (metals and minerals, oil and gas, forestry and paper) has meant that, over time, the trend towards outsourcing or contracting non-core ICT functions to an experienced, dedicated and reliable service provider has gained in favour. Metals and minerals operations are traditionally geographically dispersed, with some located hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town. The challenge with this type of set up is that access to good skills, which understand the metals and minerals commercial and operational environments, is a continual challenge.

Remote support tends to work very well in these environments, but a lack of innovation due to ICT not understanding the nature of the organisation it is supporting, has presented a multitude of challenges, culminating in aspects like minimal access to the correct IT expertise. In these situations, there’s limited access to teams of people with relevant ICT experience. Due to this, often an individual in the organisation fulfils multiple roles at remote sites. As an example, this resource would act as the IT manager, desktop support manager, server engineer, and application engineer, functions that require deeper skillsets, but are often trusted to this single person. This leads to disparate skills and services being performed at each operation as the services are dependent on the level of expertise of the specific individual.

Becoming increasingly agile

The ability for natural resources organisations to be more agile in delivering their ICT services is a continual challenge. For these companies to be able to add value to their operational environment, they require a spread of diversified skills to operate effectively and efficiently. Due to the remote geographical locations in which they often operate, this is impossible to achieve as resourcing in these areas is difficult to come by. The trend is for more companies that operate remotely to outsource their IT and communications needs, as they simply don’t want to worry about managing people and technology.

However, even though outsourcing to a dedicated service provider is the ideal, it’s also seldom the most practised method. The key is to manage technology demands and delivery expectations of these organisations in three ways: offer a core set of centralised services; only deliver what is totally necessary at the remote site; and, where possible, standardise on services across all operating sites.

Centralised core services enables clients to access key resources, such as a central service desk, without having to purchase the service physically. Such companies would rather pay for someone to deliver a service and run it as an operational model, while outsourcing or contracting non-core services. By centralising services, natural resources organisations are able to access the correct skills and drive down their total cost of ownership (TCO). The same applies to managed services principles for all ICT technology domains.

In addition, companies operating across borders are under increasing pressure to manage their legislative, regulatory and compliance requirements governed by Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and other legislative measures. In these cases, the ability to source the necessary skill in a particular geography based on the legislative need becomes easier if outsourced to a service provider. Secondly, the ability to standardise good practices globally, to ensure that legislative requirements are regulated and managed in the same consistent manner across all operations, is easier to achieve if managed as an end-to-end service through an ICT outsource partner.

Core value chain activities

Natural resources organisations’ primary focus is on their core value chain activities. These are what deliver value to shareholders. In many of these organisations, the measurement factors of the cost of production against the cost of sale, while balancing this with safety mechanisms, are core drivers to determine how the operation is performing. Organisations in natural resources are under pressure to reduce the cost of operation as safely as possible, to ensure a better return on the capital employed in the operation. Where ICT is involved, it is often seen as a cost base on the bottom line of the company. One of the primary reasons that ICT outsourcing makes sense for natural resources organisations is because it provides consistency of services and cost, and guarantees a certain level of service, which together help reduce operating costs.

One of the biggest grudges that ICT managers have within metals and minerals operations is the constant flux in the cost of technology. The result is that there is a big move by service providers to offer these organisations predictability in their cost base, which is an update on the legacy operational systems of what were once called step-down costs. New financial models that allow services and resources to be purchased on-demand allow for agility in ICT operation in the business, freeing up capex and opex to the business for reuse on important operating initiatives.

Innovation

There’s an expectation from clients in the natural resources space for ICT service providers to innovate while using technology and ideas to improve processes within the organisation continually – the mantra is to become more efficient to be able to pass on cost savings to the client. The ability to be agile when delivering ICT services is fundamental to the overall success of any outsource project, which may include networking, security, converged communications, application development and support, and other IM-based services. Being able to present clients with a broad IT service offering makes the world of difference, while offering enough flexibility to adapt to changing demands, specifically contractually as the business changes over time.

This ties in very closely with the ICT service provider’s ability to offer strong management skills as well as innovation across multiple areas of ICT and within the all-important client space. Being able to understand the business requirements of ICT systems, such as the critical nature of the exchange environment, is critical to the success of any managed service environment. Services based on this understanding can then be defined that are fit-for-purpose for the business.

Over and above this, there is a need for an outsource partner to understand the base dynamics of the organisation. These fundamentals are building blocks to enable innovation to flow between both parties, which allows for innovative thought leadership to become a reality, driving agility, effectiveness and efficiency over the long term.

Source: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/379/82780.html

Did you like this? Share it:

Economic downturn benefits China’s service outsourcing

Against the gloomy economy in Europe and the United States, China’s service outsourcing industry grew robustly in the fist seven months of 2012, a senior official said on Sept 25, one day ahead the forth China Sourcing Summit in Hangzhou.

In the first seven months, the contract value of China’s service outsourcing industry grew by 58.1 percent to hit $32 billion, said Jiang Yimao, director of the service outsourcing department of Commerce Ministry.

The implemented value of service outsourcing grew by 52.7 percent over a year ago to reach $23.2 billion, Jiang said.

"The economic downturn in Europe and the United States has not affected China’s outsourcing industry. On the contrary, it had a positive influence because companies in the West spared no efforts to cut their business costs by offshore outsourcing," Jiang said.

As a result, Chinese businesses have won offshore outsourcing contracts with a value of $22.35 billion from Jan to July, up 47.9 percent from a year ago. The completed contracts in the period surged 46.1 percent to $11.64 billion.

The central government’s active support has boosted the country’s service outsourcing industry in the recent few years. In 2011, its contract value hit $32.39 billion, up 63.4 percent from 2010, according to the Commerce Ministry.

The unprecedented growth has positioned China as the world’s second-largest outsourcing provider after India, accounting for 28.7 percent of the global market.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-09/25/content_15782738.htm

Did you like this? Share it:

Cloud Computing Is Leading The Outsourcing Market

Cloud computing is revolutionizing the companies’ infrastructures. More and more companies are spending their outsourcing budget on purchasing cloud services. This helps them avoid hiring more people and save a fair amount of funds from their budgets. Research firms (including Gartner Inc.) have published figures that demonstrate the trend of cloud computing services in the IT outsourcing market.

On August 7th, 2012, Gartner Inc. said that out of $251.7 billion of total market of IT outsourcing, cloud computing services are the fastest-growing segment, having increased from $3.4 (2011) to $5 (2012). Currently, this is still insignificant when compared with the $251.7 billion market, but we can hope to see them as the leading area of IT outsourcing because of their high growth rate. Let’s take a look at some of the factors that have made cloud computing services so popular in the IT outsourcing sector.

Why Companies Prefer Cloud Services

  • No Need to Hire Extra Staff

This is a major advantage of using cloud computing services. The applications are handled by the cloud services providers; they are responsible for maintaining and repairing the applications. The company that uses them has no need to hire extra staff to take care of  these software applications.

  • Instant Deployment

Cloud computing services are readily available and they can be instantly integrated into a company’s infrastructure. The company only needs to subscribe to the services and then it can access them from any PC with an Internet connection. On-premises applications need time to be installed on the company’s systems, they need to be configured according to the company’s requirements, so it takes time to bring them in the running condition.

  • Scalability

Cloud computing services are highly scalable. The company that uses them can easily require to the provider to increase the capabilities and functionalities of these services, if this is necessary. As these services usually run on distributed computers, adding more space and processing power is no difficult task. Also, everything is done dynamically, with zero downtime.

These are only some of the advantages of cloud computing services that justify the current trend of companies towards them. In the near future, it would be no surprise to see cloud computing services becoming the leading segment of the IT outsourcing market.

source: http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/08/cloud-computing-is-leading-the-outsourcing-market/

Did you like this? Share it: