Outsourced IT is proven to result in a number of benefits for companies of all sizes, including a significant reduction in costs.

Martyn Hart, chairman of the National Outsourcing Association, has spoken of the role the practice has played in helping firms overcome the effects of the recession.

He admitted there have been “winners and losers” over recent years, but generally a wise move has been to outsource some non-essential tasks.

“As more organisations look to reduce costs, there has been a rise in outsourcing, as passing non-core activities to specialist providers is a proven way to reduce capital expenditure,” Mr Hart stated.

The expert added that while the outsourced IT industry is booming in terms of number of deals, the economic downturn has resulted in many contracts being of a lower value.

Analyst firm Ovum recently predicted that outsourced IT will grow in popularity among businesses in the utilities sector over the coming years.

Source:http://www.codestone.net/news/story/outsourced-it-is-a-proven-way-to-save-money/800696236/

Ahmed Ali Ashadawi, CEO and President of Al-Falak Electronic Equipment and Supplies Company.

Saudi Arabia is required to encourage the country’s private sector to train more Saudis in the field of information technology (IT), an area that lacks trained professionals, said a high-ranking official of Riyadh-based IT company.

Ahmed Ali Ashadawi, CEO and President of Al-Falak Electronic Equipment and Supplies Company said that Saudi IT companies should either be encouraged to establish technical colleges or support the existing ones for training programs that suit the job market.

Al-Falak provides technology-based end-to-end solutions in Saudi Arabia and Middle East.

Amidst increasing demand in the job market, the Kingdom is still short of trained IT professionals, Ashadawi said. “Finding trained Saudi IT professionals is a problem that companies have been facing in Saudi Arabia,” he added. “We believe that the Kingdom would benefit more economically from investing in the training of its people in technical institutions. which can provide talented IT personnel with the necessary skills required in the local job market.”

The Saudization scenario at Al-Falak is totally different, he said. The company has been investing in its HRD program and as a result, has already achieved 50 percent Saudization in all its IT jobs. “In fact, over 50 percent of our workforce are Saudi nationals, far exceeding the country’s condition of mandatory 30 percent Saudization,” he said.

“One of our key priorities is to invest in our people, which is why we have set up an innovation committee with a mandate to leverage the expertise and ideas of our employees to further expand the company and improve our operations. He added that the company benefits from its access to a very talented pool of internationally certified Saudi technical practitioners that were trained by Al-Falak’s sister company Alkhaleej Training and Education, which has branches across the Kingdom.

Developing trained local manpower is in the mutual interest of both public and private sectors as the Kingdom’s IT market is expected to grow at a rate of 10 percent through 2013, he said. Saudi Arabia has been investing heavily in its IT infrastructure by installing more fiber optic line. “The figure could go up further once planned broadband projects go online. Around 65,000 kilometers of additional fiber optic cables are projected to be installed in 2011, as compared to around 11,000 last year,” he added.

Ashadawi said that for some time now, Saudi Arabia has been working to implement e-commerce and to achieve efficiency in e-governance. One bottleneck that has arised is limited broadband capacity, which he believes the extra fiber optic cables can solve in the coming months. He said that the country’s IT sector has been engaged in large-scale lump-sum projects over the past few years in order to keep pace with elevated IT demand from the government and private sectors for the services such as system solutions and consulting; system integration and networking; IPTV solutions; analytical and business intelligence and data warehousing. “Al-Falak has been growing with the country’s IT sector and has been adding new business lines such as general contracting and manpower outsourcing to meet the evolving needs of our clients,” Ashadawi explained.

“We have been in the business for three decades, during which we have been a local technology partner for some of the world’s top IT names such as SAS, HP, Oracle, Symantec and Microsoft.”

Al-Falak’s other strategies would be to reinforce their market share through expansion practices of retail and distribution channels and acquisition of companies that compliment the company’s activities and goals.

“Al-Falak has been able to tap its infrastructure and know-how to broaden its regional reach, which now covers Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Sudan on a project-to-project basis. We have also invested in partnerships with international companies based in the US and Canada,” he said. “Local companies have to compete with their international counterparts. Saudi IT players should understand that they have to constantly enhance their product and service portfolios, as people will not only use the services offered by local companies,” he explained.

“We want to do more business with Microsoft and our other allies by expanding what we offer from their existing portfolios of products and services and even launching new joint ventures with them,” he said.

Al-Falak is the winner of three major Microsoft Awards for 2010, including Saudi Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), Distributor of the Year, and Microsoft Saudi Specialized Devices and Applications (SDA) Distributor of the Year. Al-Falak’s Distribution and Microsoft Product Manager, Anthony Fernandes, also received the Best Microsoft Product Manager award.

Source:http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2011030194856

The relationship between companies outsourcing IT departments and their third-party service providers has morphed into a “much deeper partnership” than it once was, according to one expert.

Writing for ChannelWeb.co.uk, Bindi Bhullar suggested that European business could potentially “save billions” through increased use of IT outsourcing.

He justified his claim by explaining how outsourcing IT is often an effective business strategy embraced by firms which need to reduce overhead costs and boost productivity on a limited budget.

Mr Mhullar went on to stress the importance of IT outsourcing clients building a strong partnership with their offshore provider, to ensure that they are able to adapt as technology evolves.

“Contracts need to be defined accordingly. Both sides need to think about how their partners would respond and how the framework would respond to changes in technology, economy and strategy,” he wrote.

Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that Britain’s struggling asset management firms were expected to embrace outsourcing over the next three years in a bid to overcome rising regulatory costs.

Source:http://www.ihotdesk.com/article/800394637/Successful-IT-outsourcing-built-on-deep-relationships

Julian Assange isn’t even safe in the cloud. In addition to being persona non grata in parts of the Western World, his website was this week kicked off Amazon.com’s servers. Is there a commercial lesson? By highlighting that not all cloud computing is created equal, the episode could benefit companies whose solutions face fewer risks.

Source;-http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703377504575651291439640442.html

China is the biggest country regarding area and population in the globe. In the outsourcing phase of business China is one of the leading countries in the business world. It is not an easy aspect to get an entry in the international trade market of China. The legal and government system in China is very complicated and it also involves a good amount of paperwork, which sometimes baffles the investors. The work council and labour unions in China outsourcing are very influential and the laws are very strong regarding the security of the international trade.

Outsourcing is the process of shifting or delegating or transferring a service or process or function to a third parties or external service provider which would otherwise be an in-house function or service or process. Outsourcing is a trend that is becoming more common in information technology and other industries for services that have usually been regarded as intrinsic to managing a business. In some cases, the entire information management of a company is outsourced, including planning and business analysis as well as the installation, management, and servicing of the network and workstations.

Outsourcing is different from contracting in the sense that in contracting there is no transfer of control where as in outsourcing there is transfer of control.

Outsourcing has taken many forms in recent times. As the past organizations still hire service providers to handle diverse business functions. But now many organizations prefer to outsource whole operations to another company or firm. These outsourcing companies are most commonly known as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO). These are also the most common form of outsourcing.

The recipients for outsourced activities are generally in the same country, when a company on another continent is involved then it is termed as offshore outsourcing. Near-shore outsourcing refers to outsourced projects that are outside the country, but on the same continent.

The main object of the outsourcing is cost reduction. Through outsourcing achieve the change by way of improve the quality and it provides access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge and also provides access to operational best practice that would be difficult or time taking to develop in house. It also provides access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills in particular in science and engineering. It involves an improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier. It also helps to reduce time to market by providing additional capability. It also involves the risk management, which helps in minimize the risk. For outsourcing some countries offer tax incentives to move manufacturing operations to counter high corporate taxes within another country.

In Outsourcing China , there is mostly considered thing is hourly labor cost. Quality of work, reliability, efficiency, flexibility, ease of communication and cultural issues are just as relevant in laying out an outsourcing strategy, as are macro factors such as geopolitical risks. The most outstanding virtue of China as an outsourcing destination is the cost. The software outsourcing business in China is still in its infancy. Most of the growth and attention is recent. However there are some risks also involved such as vendor landscape, which is a backdrop, explains the fragmented vendor landscape. The Chinese software industry is awash with small companies. This fragmentation feeds into and explains why many of the Chinese software companies haven’t been able to amass the kind of higher level skills needed to handle projects larger than one-off contracting work. Another risk factor is the talent pool available in China. Though the supply of workers is abundant, the quality of this supply is, in fact, still questionable and hence something to consider before outsourcing to China.

China provides vast outsourcing services in various fields such as tours and travels, health, medical, technology, cars, home, family, business etc. China outsourcing provides efficient and effective services with its experience, education and special skills to all over the world that’s why it becomes one of the leading countries in the world in the phase of business outsourcing.

Source:http://www.vocabulation.com/outsourcing-in-china-2