Author: John

  • Research Activity: Three major IT outsourcing companies

    Identify three major IT outsource organisations and identify the services they provide and who their major customers are. Accenture (https://www.accenture.com) Customers include BMW, Oracle Corporation and SSE. Services provided include: Service desk outsourcing—Reduce risk through multi-site support and introduce remote or self-service capabilities to cut help desk costs by 30 percent to 50 percent. Workplace…

  • Infrastructure

    Delivery of I.T. infrastructure is responsibility of I.T. management. Infrastructure holds and processes significant assets belonging to the organisation. Delivery methods may vary. All of infrastructure may be run and owned by organisation, completely outsourced as a “black box” or somewhere in between. Infrastructure Delivery: All in house – most straight forward method, directly controlled…

  • Conclusion

    Similarities between management of I.T. departments and other departments. I.T. departments have some specific functions requiring management. Many different ways to manage an I.T. department. Management have significant decisions to make. Both directly and indirectly employed staff used to satisfy workload.  

  • Consulting

    Similar to contracting but on a larger scale. Instead of employing an individual, an organisation with many resources and specialisms and much knowledge is sourced.

  • Contracting

    Common method to fulfil human resourcing requirements. Often brought in a for specified time and/or project. Contractors help even out peaks & troughs in workloads. Contractors are expensive compared to directly employed workers. Also knowledge gained by contractors leaves organisation when the contract ends. Contractors have a period of time when they need to get…

  • Offshoring

    Outsourced I.T. services often offshored – work is carried out in a different country, often different continent. Common destination for offshoring is India. Expected benefits of offshoring: reduced costs improved quality potential 24 hours operating time, time zone pending “In the past Wipro would send about 100 employees to write, install and provide support for…

  • Docker: an overview

    I have been reading a few white papers and articles about Continuous Delivery (CD) and Database Lifecycle Management (DLM) recently and have seen mention of Docker – in fact the first time I came across it was reading the Rainbird website (Norwich-based AI company). My first impression was that Docker is like VMWare or Virtual…

  • Outsourcing Areas

    All I.T. functions can be outsourced, or individual ones such as: Software development significant amount of offshore development carried out in India. Can reduce cost of software development and may contribute to better quality software. Software maintenance Allows organisation to focus on new development. Has peaks & troughs so beneficial to outsource. Network management Access…

  • Costs of Outsourcing

    Contract management costs Loss of knowledge Costs if outsourcing relationship has problems Cost of any tender process Possible security problems

  • Benefits of Outsourcing

    Enables management to focus on core business Cost benefits from the economies of scale provided by the outsourcer Helps manage peaks and troughs of workloads Access to specialist skills Access to the outsource’s knowledge Helps manage risk