According to a press release, Research and Markets has released the “2009 Top Education ITO Vendors, Black Book Survey 2009 Results” report.
In the last year, the Black Book IT outsourcing education sector user survey has looked at more than 38 agreements by 455 education agencies as well as companies. In total, eighteen key performance indicators (KPIs) were utilized and scores were given to each vendor and ranked on a scale of 0-10.

Some of the major findings in the report include the following: The most significant attributes affecting education ITO customer satisfaction with outsourcing providers are KPIs vertical expertise, trust, customization, client relationships and reliability. It was also found that vendor dissatisfaction is not very common in the education ITO sector particularly with top notch suppliers. Strong satisfaction has been expressed by 25.4% of global clients. Incidentally, U.S. and U.K. clients are the most satisfied among all clients. Approximately 65.8% said they approved of their vendors.

In contrast, dissatisfaction with outsourcing vendors were present among 13% of those who were polled in 2009. Meanwhile, only 7% of companies in the U.S. and Europe were dissatisfied.

Companies mentioned in the survey include SunGard, Verizon Business, Infosys, IBM Global, Hewlett-Packard, Unisys, Capgemini, Accenture, Mahindra Satyam, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro Infocrossing.

Incidentally, outsourcing to India has dominated the offshoring scene for the last ten to twenty years with outsourcing giants like Infosy, Wipro and TCS. And education is not the only sector to use offshoring as a means for cost savings. The best seo companies, mobile application companies, and game development firms are other firms involved in the outsourcing landscape.

The Top Education ITO Vendor report comes on the heels of a bill that was passed by the House to prevent outsourcing. Though much of the outsourcing is offshored to faraway destinations, unemployment in the U.S. has led to calls for restricting outsourcing. Should the bill be passed in the Senate, the bill will close loopholes for taxation for multinational firms outsourcing to other countries. This is done largely to keep American jobs at home and to prevent outsourcing.

It will be interesting to see how the Top Education ITO vendors will manage to get around this bill and create a market in the U.S.

Source:http://advice.cio.com/jakewriter/10531/black_book_survey_top_education_it_outsourcing_vendors_released

The Queensland Department of Education and Training has renewed a three-year outsourcing services contract with Unisys’ Australian subsidiary. Under the agreement, Unisys will continue providing IT services to all Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes across the state. As part of the initiative, the company said it expects to emphasize the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) methodology in IT processes.

The contract is valued at about AUS$41 million (US$38 million) during the initial three-year term. It can be renewed twice for one-year periods.

A Unisys team of 85 will provide IT services for students, teachers, and staff at 90 campuses across 13 TAFE Queensland institutes and the Australian Agricultural College. The vendor will support 330 servers and 19,000 desktops, manage the local and wide area networks, and provide help desk services to respond to 75,000 support calls per year.

Unisys said it plans to introduce new and improved processes and toolsets for service management, service desk, change management, problem management, and asset management. The processes and toolsets will be aligned to the ITIL set of practices and policies for IT service management, which is designed to improve service delivery efficiency and quality.

Source:http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/02/08/queensland-department-of-ed-re-ups-with-outsourced-it-services.aspx