IT outsourcing: What to do when your contract is about to end (whitepaper)

Outsourcing contracts worth billions are up for renewal in the next few years. In this special report, Computer Weekly examines how unprecedented change is complicating the CIO’s renewal decision.

Topics covered:

• According to ISG, there are nearly 3,000 IT outsourcing contracts worth more than $5m a year around the world coming up for renewal in the next three years – representing a combined total value of over $270bn (£175bn). Among them are 1,400 deals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) worth more than $14bn altogether. Accenture, Atos, BT, Capgemini, HP, IBM and TCS all have a large number of contracts coming to the end of term.
• When its major IT deal with IBM (previously PwC), Fujitsu and Concentrix came up for renewal after 13 years and £1.6bn spent, the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) undertook a two-year project to bring it all back in-house. The move in-house brought more than 300 staff to the DVLA from the suppliers, taking its total IT workforce to over 630. The insourcing is expected to save the government agency at least £225m over 10 years on top of £70m on procurement costs. The DVLA plans to become an agile IT organisation.
• Significant technology change will have taken place since old contracts now approaching renewal were first signed. CIOs need to know how cloud computing, automation and artificial intelligence can help them meet the aims of the business, but they also need to be able to spot a fad. This, though, is easier said than done as businesses enter the new territory of digital business.
• Finding the best location – or mix of them – for IT services has become a more complicated task in recent years because CIOs have more options. Suppliers all around the world now offer IT and business process delivery services, all of which have their own advantages.

Download the WhitePaper from: Computerweekly-IT outsourcing: What to do when your contract is about to end

 

 

 

Is the CIO’s career more important than business success?

In our first white paper of this series, we looked at the “moments that matter” for IT professionals and the realisation that the majority of these moments were internally-focused IT projects which had little impact on the business overall. In this paper, we explore the IT professionals view of personal and company risk – whether these differ and what problems this may cause as we enter the digital era. This second paper looks at the IT professionals attitude to risk as new roles and expectations emerge. Companies of all shapes and sizes are devoting increasing energy to the challenges and opportunities arising from new found digital capacities. IT has shifted from being a business process tool to now being embedded as the engine of business creativity. And as a consequence, the quality of technical leadership has become a critical success factor.

Download White Paper at: Is the CIO’s career more important than business success?

CIO: Instinct or hard data – which wins?

Companies of all shapes and sizes are devoting increasing energy to the challenges and opportunities arising from newfound digital capacities. IT has shifted from being a business process tool to now being embedded as the engine of business creativity. And as a consequence, the quality of technical leadership has become a critical success factor. In the life of any company, regardless of its size or sector, there are defining moments. Similarly, critical and defining events (the Moments that Matter) occur during the career progression of all leaders. Through an in-depth qualitative study of the IT management in over 300 companies in the UK, France and Germany, we have explored key issues to gain insight on what empowers (or disempowers) successful alignment with modern business practice. We looked at how IT professionals assess risk; the critical moments which shape the CIO’s career and what tools and techniques they prefer when managing change.

Download White Paper at: CIO: Instinct or hard data – which wins?

The BPO Profession in 2015

As the BPO industry has steadily matured over the past two-plus decades, a core competency is emerging that encompasses all the elements of managing and creating value from business and technology services relationships.

This core competency is centered on defining and working toward a common set of defined business outcomes, with an entrepreneurial spirit, which we call “The Capability Broker” career path. HfS research shows 97% of the Global 2000 have a significant outsourcing relationship, with thousands of people with specific roles, metrics, deliverables, and proven results in BPO and IT engagements. Today, a generation of professionals has been in BPO long enough (the first contracts date back to more than 20 years ago), and with enough professional advancements and accumulated impact to call BPO an actual career. However, this career does not begin and end in BPO, as there is a link with corporate enterprises. As BPO has matured, it has also evolved in most large enterprises to more than merely a stand-alone delivery model. Increasingly, maturing service buyers are incorporating a mix of offshore and on-site delivery staff with the rest of the enterprise. They are all becoming a more crucial element of a hybrid operating environment that frequently involves in-house shared services, offshore in-house centers, and other service provider delivery teams in adjacent areas. As businesses use these models and enabling technologies to define and deliver specific business outcomes in a more collaborative and flexible fashion, we see it all coming together as the “As-a-Service Economy.” In today’s emerging “As-a-Service Economy,” where on-tap service delivery becomes the norm for enterprises that need flexibility and third-party expertise, we have an opportunity to clearly define a career path for professionals who have developed an expertise in what started as a niche competency and has quickly grown into a recognizable and marketable set of skills. The BPO role encapsulates the skills required not only to deliver smoothly run operational processes but also to impact business outcomes that are strategic to the business, using creative thinking, business insight, and technology tools effectively.

Download the whitepaper at: The BPO Profession in 2015

Top 10 Ways to Use Help Desk to Build Your MSP Business

This informative resource provides 10 helpful suggestions for building a successful MSP business, starting with the help desk.

Download the whitepaper at: Top 10 Ways to Use Help Desk to Build Your MSP Business

WhitePaper: “Better Outcomes for IT Outsourcing – Building Better Partnerships fit for the Digital Era.”

For too long, IT outsourcing has locked organizations into contracts not fit for purpose. Learn how to create partnerships that exceed your expectations: helping you drive business performance and growth, while managing risk.

The digital transformation that we’re all seeing around us is reshaping industries, transforming customer expectations, and opening up new, previously unimaginable, opportunities. This is fundamentally changing what organizations need from their IT function — and consequently how organizations contract with and interact with thirdparty providers.

Download the white paper “Better Outcomes for IT Outsourcing – Building Better Partnerships fit for the Digital Era.”

Whitepaper: Outsourcing IT Projects to Managed Hosting or the Cloud: 12 Critical Success Factors to Consider.

Outsourcing is here to stay – especially the kind of “outsourcing” that means moving an application or workload from your data center to a third-party managed service or cloud service.   Whether you want to move an entire IT function like e-mail, or simply provision more storage or processing for a small team, well-executed outsourcing can deliver compelling benefits:   -Moving costs from CAPEX to OPEX  -Eliminating mundane IT chores  -Reallocating staff to more strategic projects  -Preserving the same governance you’ve always had   This white paper outlines 12 critical success factors to consider when outsourcing IT to managed hosting or the cloud. To compile this list, we drew from the 15+ years of hands-on experience Rackspace has gained helping hundreds of thousands of customers move workloads to managed hosting or the cloud.

Download the Whitepaper at: Rackspace-Outsourcing IT Projects to Managed Hosting or the Cloud: 12 Critical Success Factors to Consider.

NOA Outsourcing YearBook 2015.

The Outsourcing Yearbook is now available throughout the year to the entire industry as an e-book.

The Outsourcing Yearbook 2015 takes a more statstical view of the outsourcing industry than in previous years – it is the ultimate annual compendium of outsourcing knowledge and insight.

This year’s Outsourcing Yearbook contains:

• Exclusive research assessing the state of the outsourcing industry and its future
• Expert predictions from sourcing specialists
• Outsourcing case studies featuring the NHS and the BBC
• Opinions, commentary and analysis from the industry’s ‘outspoken outsourcers’
• A full version of the NOA’s Directory of Outsourcing Suppliers

Access your free copy at: NOA Outsourcing YearBook 2015. 

How to Deal With a Perfect Storm of Disruption in the Managed Services Business

There is a growing chorus of concern among MSP’s. It’s not that they are filled with doom-andgloom; rather, there’s a shared feeling that a major inflection point has been reached in the MSP industry. We’re bracing for more change in the next two years than the industry has seen in the past 15. Drivers that are creating a perfect storm of disruption include new competitors, converging technologies, and IT everywhere. Change on the scale we’re anticipating always brings explosive opportunities and challenges. Whether you emerge a winner or loser will be defined by how you respond to both. That’s my purpose in writing this paper: to share candid insights on the big trends we’re seeing. More importantly, I want to give you the strategies and action steps N-able Technologies is recommending to ensure our global Partners stay on top of change – and remain the most successful MSPs in the world. Everything in this paper is based on my experience working with our 2,500 global Partners and an analysis by N-able’s senior management team. This paper will be invaluable if you’re a MSP or IT service provider targeting SMBs or mid-market customers. The insights will equip you with practical strategies for sailing with greater confidence through a perfect storm of disruption.

Big Drivers fo Change

We always expect change. When we see the following, we quickly realize that “rear view vision” will be less and less useful for predicting the road ahead. Here are the five big change agents we are actively tracking and creating strategies for:

1. New Competitors – and “Convergence”

2. Commoditization – driving price wars

3. Mobility – and mobile computing

4. IT Anywhere – and on any device

5. The Cloud – a new reality in Managed Services

Let’s tackle each one to create the right context for the strategies we are recommending to our global Partners – and that you may want to adopt too.

Download the whitepaper:  How to Deal With a Perfect Storm of Disruption in the Managed Services Business

Overcoming the Top 6 Obstacles to Managed Services Success

Overcoming the Top 6 Obstacles to Managed Services Success

White Paper sponsored by N-able Technologies

The MSP market is predicted to grow from $142.75 billion to $256.05 billion by 2018, a trend that is likely due to growth in outsourcing, increased market penetration by new businesses, and advancements in cloud technology. However, in spite of this clear trend, many service providers still struggle to make ends meet, with few successfully reaping the benefits of transforming their business to managed services. This white paper reveals the top six obstacles to success in managed services, drawn from the experiences of 3,000 MSPs around the world. This list is an equally great resource for those just getting into managed services and those whose businesses are struggling, detailing the following topics: The key to building recurring revenue Why automation is the key to profitability And more

Download the WhitePaper at: Overcoming the Top 6 Obstacles to Managed Services Success