The IT services provider, Logica, was chosen by the international group of insurance and financial services Skandia to provide solutions for infrastructure management (IM) based on Cloud Computing for their systems and mission critical financial applications.

Valued at € 15 million, the outsourcing contract is valid for three years, extendable for two more.

The company Skandia will help to adapt and scale their IT systems to better meet their business demands.

The solution of outsourcing infrastructure management to the Logic European multinational, is the provision of services that include data centers and maintenance of 950 clustered servers, 24×7 remote management.

The technology will improve operational efficiency and business and help the Skandia to position itself as an environmentally correct, with the use of Green IT.

“Much of the contract consists of mission-critical functions. Therefore, the ability to provide reliable service and high level of security was a key criterion in the choice of supplier.

Logica has shown understanding of our needs, including the service of having an economical, flexible and secure, “says the CEO of Skandia Informationsteknologi, Pierre Strandelin.

Source:http://www.cotidianodigital.com.br/menu_05/noticia.asp?id=681

The difficulties in Texas and Virginia haven’t discouraged all states from considering IT outsourcing. In fact, as IBM and Texas worked in July to salvage their partnership, North Carolina set in motion a statewide IT assessment that could ultimately result in the state partnering with one or more vendors.

In a memorandum sent to her executive branch leadership, Gov. Bev Perdue said the need to improve North Carolina’s technology infrastructure was one reason for studying how the state delivers IT. Saving money is another motivator, as legislators are making hard choices to close a $3.2 billion budget deficit.

North Carolina spends more than $1 billion on IT annually, according to Perdue’s office, so cutting costs is a priority whether or not the state decides to bring in a private partner.

The assessment, to be done by a third-party firm, will take an “in-depth look at areas across all executive branch agencies where consolidation and utilization of private-sector IT services would bring more value to the citizens of North Carolina,” Perdue said.

State CIO Jerry Fralick said in a statement that “any effort to gain efficiencies and improvements in IT must be based on hard, objective data from a third party.” The consultant will not be allowed to bid on or be affiliated with RFPs that result from the study.

If North Carolina privatizes some or all of its IT operations, the model wouldn’t necessarily look like the agreements in Texas or Virginia, where a single vendor was picked to be the sole technology provider. Some governments have instead chosen to “multisource” their outsourcing contracts so that different vendors are picked for specific functions or services — a piece-by-piece approach.

One piece is already under way in North Carolina. Perdue stated in her memo that within months the state will pick a vendor to build a new state portal, which she said would reduce operation and maintenance costs. If successful, that privatization could embolden the state to pursue a similar solution for other services like cyber-security and hardware management.

The IT assessment was expected to begin in September. Fralick will likely play a key role in the transformation. Perdue is backing a recommendation made by her Budget Reform and Accountability Commission to give the state CIO more authority. The assessment will include a recommended governance structure for North Carolina’s transformed IT organization.

It remains to be seen if a partnering vendor will become the central piece of that new structure.

“The goal is to move aggressively toward an improved IT infrastructure that will lower costs, reduce complexity and redundancy, improve the utilization of resources and increase security,” Perdue wrote.

Source:http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/767030

In the last decade CIOs have debated­ ICT outsourcing from every angle. But for the construction and building sector, outsourcing has always­ been the main modus operandi.

There is little point in an organisation having a team of plasterers­ waiting for walls to be built, far better to hire in the expertise­ of a plasterer as and when needed. Each part of the construction process ­requires specialist tools, which are never­ cheap. So for construction companies the advantages of IT outsourcing became a natural fit.

Andrew Newton is IT director of Keepmoat, a Doncaster-based social housing specialist. “We are experts in the renewal of social housing through the Decent Homes project from the Labour ­government, so we work for social housing­ landlords, people who have taken over the council housing stock,” Newton explains.

The Keepmoat holding company has three brands: Frank Haslam Milan, a regeneration specialist; Bramall Construction, a regeneration specialist for central England; and Keepmoat Homes, which focuses on affordable housing.

“Focus on something that you do well and do it repetitively well,” he says of the company’s route to success. “We didn’t build the Keepmoat Stadium (home of Doncaster Rovers FC and a stone’s throw from the company HQ) or this office. Construction is very segmented, just like IT.

In construction you use subcontractors for their specialist­ tools. Construction was a pioneer of outsourcing, so applying that logic to IT is just being consistent.”

Newton has been with Keepmoat since 2004 and was tasked with consolidating the IT of the three company divisions when he joined. Outsourcing was a way of bringing IT systems together and avoiding political problems within the company. He began by outsourcing the communications infrastructure to Star, a specialist in this area.

An additional benefit was that Keepmoat gained the ability to add and expand the communications infrastructure as and when required.

Construction companies are totally reliant on good communications, and as Keepmoat staff are renovating or managing communities at 250 separate sites at a time, strong links to the site managers’ ­offices are critical so that project leaders can connect to clients, HQ and suppliers.

Each site has two or three connectivity points for telecoms and data. Newton explains that the offices that need connections can vary from a Portakabin or demonstration house through to a commercial unit close to the construction site.

“Each site needs a communications ­infrastructure. This gives us a central data­centre connection for the corporate network so that we have consistent Microsoft Active Directory and single virus protection.”

In essence it doesn’t matter where the site office is or if staff connecting to corporate applications are in the headquarters or on site, they get the same level of connectivity.

Newton chose Star, a tier 2 provider, because it understood the scenario Keepmoat was facing and was “prepared to come up with a solution for our network” and work with partners where necessary to provide coverage. Newton says he was surprised at the way Keepmoat was treated by other network providers.

“A lot of network specialists wanted to sell to a peer type organisation; others spoke to us like we were communications specialists. Yet our view was we weren’t, we wanted someone to take all that pain away,” he explains.

Newton’s IT team of 19 is split across the three divisions of the company and has to support 1300 users. As IT director Newton reports to the efficiency director, who is responsible for the organisation’s supply chain. Newton likes the reporting line as it means both IT and supply chain are seen as ways of creating efficiency.

Keepmoat uses decision analysis­ techniques for IT and corporate decisions, adding weightings to factors behind a decision. One area currently under consideration is the introduction of a document management system to replace the current system based on Microsoft SharePoint.

Blueprints for the future

There are challenges ahead for Keepmoat: the Labour government’s Decent Homes policy for acceptable social housing standards is coming to an end this year and so the company is aiming to become a leader in creating sustainable housing.

The construction sector has been one of the hardest-hit sectors during the recent credit crisis and it has been just as difficult for Keepmoat as its peers. “In 2008 Keepmoat lost a lot of people from the house-building division and IT was ­expected to follow with the rest of the business,” Newton says of the painful need to make cuts to his team.

As it was, he only had to make three redundancies and reduced the team from 27 to 19 using natural attrition of project-focused people moving on from Keepmoat.

Newton cut his teeth as an IT leader at the manufacturing behemoth Unilever, “one of the well known milkround training­ grounds,” he says of his time there. “I was automating processes, creating a fully ­automated soap plant to replace 19th century processes; it was a radical change to introduce.”

From Unilever he moved into the metals sector to join the London & Scandinavian Metallurgical company, a maker of specialised metals. He worked his way up to IT director, a global role that meant he spent a long time with his suitcase.

But as with many CIO careers, events outside IT were to intervene. The company was owned by an investment house that had lent significant amounts to the dotcom startups of the turn of this century. Then the tragic events of September 11, 2001 caused a drastic downturn in the aircraft sector, the main clients of the company.

Group roles were culled and Newton briefly joined a textiles company, but again he was spending a lot of time with that suitcase. So when the IT director’s role for Keepmoat was advertised he moved swiftly.

“What attracted me is that it is an agent for positive change. I used to commute from Rotherham and there was a very rough estate there built in the 1960s, it was pulled down and redeveloped by Keepmoat and then it was so much better than it was before. I thought ‘there is an organisation I’d like to work for’,” he says.

Now with time to be with the family and a holiday home in the Lake District, he’s enjoying being the IT leader of a builder that aims to reshape people’s lives for the better.

Source:http://www.cio.co.uk/article/3233225/keepmoat-cio-andrew-newton-outsourcing-is-natural-to-construction-trade/?intcmp=HPF3

While outsourcing has been a major trend in the IT industry for some years now, that tide is starting to turn.

Many companies are realising that the pitfalls of outsourcing are not worth the benefits-and even those are not looking as rosy as they were in the past.

The two major benefits touted by outsource specialists have been cost effectiveness and the ability for companies to focus on core competencies.

Because of the need to employ software developers and other technical specialists, the argument was that IT management should be left to the IT professionals, while the business got on with business.

These days, however, advances in technology have made IT merely an enabler, giving companies the tools to operate more efficiently and effectively.

Integrated solutions with intuitive interfaces are more available on the market, so a high degree of technical skill in-house is not as essential as it was previously.

Companies who decided to outsource some years ago are starting to realise that relinquishing the control of their data and systems to an external operator has its drawbacks. For one, a lot of flexibility is lost as it is difficult to tailor for individual customer requirements.

Also, when a system sits outside a business it is more difficult to control quality and service delivery even with stringent SLAs in place.

By keeping IT in-house, it is easier to manage output by holding employees directly accountable, as well as provide customised solutions for clients. In addition, your data is available on-site making access easier and enabling you to manage privacy aspects more effectively.

One of the primary arguments for outsourcing has always been cost efficiencies. The models used by outsourcers have assumed the need for a high degree of technical expertise in-house, which today is not relevant.

While outsourcing may still make financial sense for some industries, others such as asset management actually tend to pay more for outsourced solutions.

This is because the outsourcer fees are linked to the amount of assets under management, so if the value of transactions increase, the fees escalate even though the volume-and therefore admin requirement-remains the same.

In addition, like with every outsourced relationship, there is a financial threshold where it makes sense for the outsourcer to focus skill and resources into the account.

If a company sits below that threshold, it is unlikely to get the same level of attention as an account with a higher fee structure. While this is a basic principle of business, it is a bitter pill to swallow considering that it is your mission-critical data and systems that are being impacted.

When it comes to IT, companies should take a long hard look at their requirements and the real savings related to outsourcing, ensuring that they are not just following a trend that has been established over the past two decades.

With some hardcore analysis of the pros and cons, you may just find that the benefits of keeping your systems in-house are far more compelling.

Source:http://moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292681?oid=498646&sn=2009+Detail+no+image&pid=287226

As budgetary constraints often play a major part in IT resourcing decisions, the advantages of IT outsourcing become more attractive for business. However what many organisations fail to realise is that wholesale IT outsourcing can have far reaching implications, not just in HR scenarios, but also the sudden and immediate loss of business knowledge and the company system idiosyncrasies that are all too often taken for granted; which once gone, take time to rebuild and re-learn.

The new form of IT Outsourcing Services that not only prepare and prevent loss of business knowledge, but assist in retaining staff either on or off site. This new approach is called as ETHICAL OUTSOURCING.

Ethical IT Outsourcing Services Business – It’s ethical because, the resources are maintained in the country you operate. In this model, instead of blindly following a high to low cost model that moves your operations to an offshore location, this model work on greater efficiencies with the staff that you have. Companies can genuinely maintain services at a lower cost, if they release their workforce in to a more flexible and focused environment.

It provides the required flexibility to take into account holiday, sickness and ad hoc project work. It’s a win/win scenario. You save costs, with no loss of business knowledge. The company and its shareholders can rest easily at night as there is no off-shoring to tarnish the company image or concern the workforce; and the employees in post get to retain their positions, doing the work they love.

IT Co-sourcing Services

This model is also called as IT Co-sourcing where utilising this model will help you to manage the peaks and troughs that all businesses experience throughout the year. Using some of the methodologies described in ethical outsourcing, allows the tactical and day-to-day activities to be managed holistically, giving organizations the time to concentrate on strategic areas.

This model will deliver an cost effective, tailored IT Outsourcing services, which complement and enhance their own IT resource. The approach is about to assisting organizations with their challenges and to take a consultative approach from the outset. This model will understand organizations challenges; and ultimately takes a flexible approach to provide a bespoke solution that is both cost effective and right for business.

Whatever the business challenges are, from one off IT Project Management through to complete Managed IT Resourcing and IT outsourcing services, this model can deliver IT solutions efficiently and cost effectively.

This will be a very intriguing concept indeed and focus will be on Ethical Outsourcing. The future is Ethical Outsourcing and we will see a rise in the number of contract workers, in-shore or off-shore. Now outsourcing is not only about getting the lowest cost, but also getting value for money. Laws will definitely catch up and companies will go for ethical outsourcing to ensure fair business practice and value for money.

The Ethical Outsourcing model will also provide the intersection of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and global IT outsourcing. Offshore outsourcing of IT and IT enabled services is well established as a business practice towards reducing costs and improving performance. This model will be well recognized as a business strategy to define and defend an organization’s position in the marketplace.

Source:http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/ethical-it-outsourcing-services-10018122/ethical-it-outsourcing-is-a-new-wave-10018123/

The year in IT services was marked by mergers, acquisitions, market maturation and the emergence of new key players. Next year, expect more of the same. IT-related outsourcing, representing approximately 40 percent of this year’s estimated $214 billion outsourcing market, is expected to grow at about 18 percent. The big winner in 2001 will be the business process outsourcer (BPO), as the enterprise turns to outsourcing non-core competencies to specialty providers.

Now that many companies have at least thought about a Web strategy, attention will turn to efficiency and effectiveness in 2001. Read this IdeaBundle to find out about key outsourcing trends in: Full IT outsourcing Network outsourcing Managed service providers (MSPs) Infrastructure outsourcing Leaner, meaner, refocused traditional outsourcers, like IBM, CDC and EDS Offshore outsourcing The impact of IT staffing shortages Trends in contract lengths, pricing schemes, terms and conditions Europe which outsourcing markets will experience a boom, and which won’t The evolution of the application service provider (ASP) market Who’s profitable? ASP staffing trends Which ISVs want a piece of the pie ASP growing pains ASPs beyond North America ASP aggregation High-profile ASP partnerships.

Source:http://outsourceforcereviews.org/739/trends-in-outsourcing/