Cutter Consortium: Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Back to Basics, Again: Sourcing

21 Oct 2009 22:45:21 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J. | E-Mail Advisors | 21 October 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Our inability to permanently kill very solvable problems is hurting the credibility and effectiveness of our profession. We cannot get out of our own way on so many issues, and it's not just the technology professionals I'm indicting here: just as many business professionals continue to misunderstand and mismanage the business technology relationship. Sourcing is one of the problems we need to solve by going back to basics.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src091021.html

Viability of the Cloud Model Still Up in the Air

20 Oct 2009 22:43:32 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 20 October 2009 | Business Intelligence; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Back in June, I discussed how, after almost four years, BI software as a service (SaaS) provider LucidEra was considering calling it quits (see "As SaaS Provider Quits, What Happens to Its Data?" 30 June 2009). Just to refresh your memory, LucidEra, founded in 2005, offers a number of on-demand BI applications, including those for customer lead insight and pipeline and order analysis. But unable to secure new funding, LucidEra reached the point where company officers began looking to sell off its intellectual property. It appears that, to some extent, this has now happened, as commercial open source BI provider Pentaho Corporation has acquired LucidEra's ClearView reporting tool technology. Pentaho plans to repackage the LucidEra tool and offer it as a front end friendly to business users for Pentaho's on-site open source BI platform and for use with SaaS deployments.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2009/bia091020.html

The Outsourcing Lifecycle Communications Strategy

20 Oct 2009 22:42:22 GMT

Cullen, Sara | Executive Updates | 20 October 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

When an organization is considering outsourcing in any of its "shore" forms (offshore, nearshore, onshore), rumors will spread like wildfire, fueled by rampant speculation regarding motive. This is driven by the FUD factors (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) -- not only with your staff, but also with current suppliers and customers or even outside organizations such as government bodies, the media, and unions.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0910.html

Service Orienting Your Business Processes, Part IV: Multichannel Capability

14 Oct 2009 22:36:13 GMT

Allen, Paul | E-Mail Advisors | 14 October 2009 | Business-IT Strategies; Enterprise Architecture; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Increasingly, we find business processes that are offered in alternative ways using different channels. For example, purchasing vehicle highway tax in the UK over the counter or online over the Internet. At the same time, as well as offering a process in its entirety over one channel, the same process can be supported by different channels at different points in the process.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2009/bit091014.html

Controlling Risk in the Cloud

8 Oct 2009 00:48:47 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | E-Mail Advisors | 07 October 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Cloud computing provides a great number of advantages, but the new risks that it entails can't be ignored. Every company that takes advantage of these services will need to perform an analysis that looks at the specific risks posed by the service provided, service conditions, and the risk profile of the firm. A small company taking limited advantage of online customer relationship management (CRM) provided through the cloud, for example, will likely be little exposed to risk. On the other hand, a larger company that uses SaaS or PaaS for a variety of operations is likely to face more serious risks and will need to evaluate each area in which risk might be encountered.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src091007.html

Defining Architectures for the Cloud, Part II

30 Sep 2009 19:23:05 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 30 September 2009 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In my previous Advisor ("Defining Architectures for the Cloud, Part I," 23 September 2009), I looked at the enterprise architecture domains of business, information, and application and how cloud computing would affect those areas. This week, I'll finish the series on the cloud with the additional architectural considerations of technology, operations, security, and implementation.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2009/ea090930.html

Service Orienting Your Business Processes, Part III: Adaptation

24 Sep 2009 01:43:17 GMT

Allen, Paul | E-Mail Advisors | 23 September 2009 | Business-IT Strategies; Enterprise Architecture; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Many of our business processes -- operating over the Internet or otherwise -- remain wedded to a production-line mindset that is stuck in the world of the 1980s. A well-planned business process managemenht (BPM) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy needs to encourage the use of services as a tool to improve processes and solve specific business problems. At the same time, organizational politics and the investments in BPM and SOA already made mean that we need to tread carefully.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2009/bit090923.html

Defining Architectures for the Cloud, Part I

29 Sep 2009 01:41:52 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 23 September 2009 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In my previous two Advisors ("Selected Innovations in Cloud Products," 9 September 2009, and "SOA and the Cloud: Getting Past the Hype," 19 August 2009), I talked about the different styles of the cloud (infrastructure as a service [IaaS], platform as a service [PaaS], software as a service [SaaS], public, and private) and some of the products that are now available in those areas. This week, I look at the cloud from an enterprise architecture perspective. To do that, I start with the typical breakdown of EA into domains of business, information, application, and technology. For each domain, I look at some of the typical questions that are answered by that architecture and that will be affected by the cloud. I also list new questions that will need to be addressed.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2009/ea090923.html

Whip Your Contracts into Shape by Assuring Compliance

24 Sep 2009 01:39:53 GMT

Cullen, Sara | E-Mail Advisors | 23 September 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Many organizations assume that if an obligation has been stated in a contract, the provider will comply with it and no further work needs to be done. However, astute organizations do not assume compliance; they ensure it. The time to discover the provider has not done so is not when your organization is seeking to invoke the clause, as the next case illustrates.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090923.html

What the Early 21st Century (in Ruins) Is Telling Us About Technology Delivery

22 Sep 2009 01:34:46 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J. | Executive Updates | 21 September 2009 | Business-IT Strategies; Innovation; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

"Everything's negotiable" is a phrase we hear a lot these days. It applies to buying a car, a home, or even a vacation. It especially applies to technology services.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0909.html

Selected Innovations in Cloud Products

9 Sep 2009 19:46:26 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 09 September 2009 | Enterprise Architecture; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In my last Advisor, "SOA and the Cloud: Getting Past the Hype" (19 August 2009), I introduced the main categories of cloud computing. This week, I'll cover some of the product innovations taking place in those categories. Of course, I can't begin to cover everything, so this is just a selection of things that I found interesting. I apologize in advance if I left out your favorite item.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2009/ea090909.html

Recession Focuses Outsourcing Decisions

9 Aug 2009 19:44:38 GMT

Adams, Dennis A. | E-Mail Advisors | 09 September 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Outsourcing represents another way of managing the costs of an activity. Whether we outsource the mowing of our lawn to avoid the cost of owning and operating a lawn mower, or if we outsource the costs of developing an IT service, the result ends up in a net savings of direct and indirect costs. If an organization believes that the quality of service received from an outsourcer is adequate, research shows that it is in that organization's best interest to outsource that need. The difficult part of outsourcing is ensuring that the quality delivered will be adequate before the outsourcing arrangement has been consummated. The quality of a manufactured good falls broadly into two camps: physical quality and perceived quality. Physical quality is the quality inherent in the product and can often be independently tested. Perceived quality is the quality a consumer perceives in the product and is associated with price, brand, or company reputation. However, service quality doesn't have the same two dimensions. Service quality is measured as technical quality (what the consumer actually receives) and functional quality (the way the service is delivered). In measuring the quality of an outsourcing service, a great deal of effort must be spent to ensure that the technical quality is what the organization expects. However, the way the services are delivered can often affect the overall perception of the outsourced quality.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090909.html

New Additions to the Sourcing Resource Center

31 Aug 2009 16:01:16 GMT

New Wave Offshoring: The Non-BRIC Challenge in Business and IT Services by Leslie Willcocks, Catherine Griffiths, and Julia Kotlarsky

Contract Performance Evaluations: Ensuring Sustainable Results from Your Outsourcing Contracts by Sara Cullen

Automation in Compliance Mapping and Assessments by Steve McCalmont and Jeri Teller-Kanzler

Service Orienting Your Business Processes, Part II: Partner Connectivity

26 Aug 2009 15:39:56 GMT

Allen, Paul | E-Mail Advisors | 26 August 2009 | Business-IT Strategies; Enterprise Architecture; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Service-oriented viewpoints are a way of gaining early measurable business value through reuse of existing services, including external cloud services as well as internal legacy services. Think of each viewpoint as a different pair of spectacles through which the analyst views the process. There are eight viewpoints; in the previous Advisor (see "Service Orienting Your Business Processes, Part I: Customer Fit and Transparence," 12 August 2009), I described the transparency and customer-fit viewpoints. In this Advisor, I'm going to concentrate on the partner-connectivity viewpoint.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2009/bit090826.html

Data Security in Outsourcing: Incident Management

26 Aug 2009 15:20:33 GMT

Herold, Rebecca | E-Mail Advisors | 26 August 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Businesses have been sourcing, and will continue to source, services from third parties located in distant countries to meet their organizational objectives of reduced cost, improved efficiencies, and higher quality of services. Yet the interconnectedness of enterprises increases operational complexity and adds to the burden on each entity to comply with strict privacy legislation and data-security requirements.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090826.html

SOA and the Cloud: Getting Past the Hype

19 Aug 2009 15:11:52 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 19 August 2009 | Enterprise Architecture; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

I suppose I ought to know better, and I do, but the marketing hype still never ceases to impress me. The latest victim: "the cloud." It is reported by our friends in the hype-cycle department that cloud computing is at the pinnacle of being overblown. This is characterized by vagueness in the marketplace, many different definitions of what it means, everyone and their brother jumping on the bandwagon, and of course the pathetic marketing literature with claims of being "in the cloud, cloud friendly, cloud based," and more. Note to marketers: here’s a dollar; buy yourself a clue!

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2009/ea090819.html

Satisfaction with On-Demand/Cloud-Based Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Remains High

18 Aug 2009 15:08:50 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 18 August 2009 | Business Intelligence; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

The majority of organizations using on-demand or cloud-based BI and data warehousing are basically satisfied with their solutions. This finding comes from a Cutter Consortium survey conducted in May-July of 79 end-user organizations (based worldwide), which was designed to measure the corporate adoption of various software as a service (SaaS)/on-demand and cloud-based BI and data warehousing technologies and practices.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2009/bia090818.html

Cloud Computing and IT Sourcing for the Enterprise

17 Aug 2009 15:04:54 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Updates | 17 August 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Cloud computing is likely to have a continual and lasting impact on sourcing. While still in its infancy, it is bringing about a "weather change" in how outsourcing is viewed as well as in client expectations. In cloud computing, services are provided on a granular, pay- as-you-go basis through a versatile infrastructure that makes possible innumerable service variations. Cloud services available today include variants on software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). These offerings are designed to provide simplified access to computing resources that can be added to corporate IT environments. Although it is far too early to assess the full impact, the potential for competition with business process outsourcing can already be seen. Customers that make use of such cloud-based SaaS offerings as Salesforce.com do not need to engage with an overseas supplier to provide the application, for example. Similarly, companies that elect to use IaaS or platform as a service (PaaS) from the cloud may have less need to outsource facilities management or their complete IT operations in the future.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0908.html

A 3-Part Approach to Scope Reviews for Outsourcing Contracts

12 Aug 2009 14:52:32 GMT

Cullen, Sara | E-Mail Advisors | 12 August 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

This Advisor continues our discussion of performance reviews for outsourcing contracts. There are three aspects of performance reviews. The first is the successful performance of the scope, which is made up of input performance, process performance, and output performance. (We'll look at the others in future Advisors, including financial performance, and compliance with the nonscope aspects of the contract.)

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090812.html

Cost-Benefit Studies for On-Demand BI, Data Warehousing Find Favor

11 Aug 2009 14:49:46 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 11 August 2009 | Business Intelligence; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

About one-fifth of end-user organizations surveyed have conducted studies in order to estimate cost savings and possible benefits from using on-demand/cloud-based BI and data warehousing solutions, and a clear majority of the results from these studies were found to be favorable. These findings were taken from a recent Cutter Consortium survey (conducted in May-July 2009) of 79 end-user organizations (based worldwide), which was designed to measure the corporate adoption of various software as a service (SaaS)/on-demand and cloud-based BI and data warehousing solutions.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2009/bia090811.html

Key Activities of the Outsourcing Lifecycle: Part III

1 Aug 2009 14:33:43 GMT

Cullen, Sara | Executive Reports | 01 August 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

This Executive Report by Dr. Sara Cullen is the third in a four-part series on the outsourcing lifecycle. The series is based on a detailed understanding of the outsourcing experiences of 107 organizations. This report picks up where Part II left off and takes you through the final building block of the Architect Phase (Design) and the two building blocks of the Engage Phase (Select and Negotiate), the first two of four phases in the outsourcing lifecycle. These building blocks will have a crucial effect on how successful your outsourcing initiative will be.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/reports/2009/03/index.html

Why Performance Reviews for Outsourcing Contracts Should Go Both Ways

29 Jul 2009 16:38:21 GMT

Cullen, Sara | E-Mail Advisors | 29 July 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Many reviews over outsourcing agreements are conducted in a similar fashion as employee performance reviews. There are a few categories, and the current contract manager gives his or her personal opinion about performance on an annual basis. In an outsourcing-immature organization (an organization that is at a low sophistication level with regard to managing the outsourcing lifecycle), this process might appear to be sufficient. The contract manager gets to vent about a few issues, the provider might hear a few positive comments, and then everyone goes back to business as usual.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090729.html

Holistic Service-Oriented Management

20 Jul 2009 14:29:16 GMT

Allen, Paul | Executive Updates | 20 July 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Organizations have traditionally organized IT along reductionist lines leading to a compartmentalization of IT into development, operations, and more. More broadly, the IT industry itself is full of niche comfort zones. One of the unfortunate consequences of the niche mentality is that the execution management of software is treated as an entirely separate subject from such topics as analysis, design, and development. While separation of concerns is necessary for specialization and discipline, it becomes unhealthy when important interconnections and relationships between domains of interest are ignored -- when separation leads to divorce!

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0907.html

Watch Out! Most Outsourcing Involves PII

17 Jun 2009 20:00:12 GMT

Herold, Rebecca | E-Mail Advisors | 17 June 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Personally identifiable information (PII) plays a key role and is involved within many business processes. PII is stored in an extremely large number of corporate systems and data storage repositories. Because of all the business processes and storage locations, every decision to outsource a business process or business activity may involve access to PII, or the transfer of PII from the organization to a third party, and possibly even subcontracted parties.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090617.html

Why Vendor Management Is an Oxymoron

3 Jun 2009 16:17:24 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J. | E-Mail Advisors | 03 June 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In the world in which we live, a world that changes almost daily, there are truths and untruths. There's hype, and there's reality. There are technologies that work, and there are technologies that stay forever in the trough of disillusionment. There are subtleties and nuances. There are smart people and nasty people. Let's look at one of the perceptual anomalies of our world or, if you prefer, a dirty little secret. Vendor management.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090603.html

New Additions

1 Jul 2009 14:44:24 GMT

Cloud Computing: A New Paradigm in IT by San Murugesan
Show Me the Money: The Use of Financial Metrics in Your Contracts by Sara Cullen
Special Considerations When Retendering an Outsourcing Contract by Sara Cullen
SaaS Market Proliferation: Buyer's Market or Industry Shakeout? by Curt Hall
Joined-Up Service Sourcing and Usage by Paul Allen
Here Comes Cloud Computing by Ken Orr, Andy Maher, and the Cutter Business Technology Council
Outsourcing Strategies to Weather a Recession by Sara Cullen
Hard Times Outsourcing: Strategy and the Role of BPO and Offshoring by Leslie Willcocks and Andrew Craig
New Ways to Deliver Old Services for Less Money by Stephen J. Andriole
Trust: The New Value Proposition for Today's BPO Provider by Eric Deitert
Help Me Help You: Practical Advice for Achieving Innovation in Outsourcing Relationships by Danny Ertel
Getting Real Cost Savings as a Buyer in IT Outsourcing Contracts by Lisa Shaw, Bronwyn Ross, and Wayne Llewellyn
Renegotiation for Service Providers: Don't Let It Just Happen to You by Sara Enlow
The Power of Proximity: How Colocated Lean-Agile Teams Deliver Better Project Outcomes with Fewer Resources by Mark Thias and Beth Cohen

http://www.cutter.com/sourcing.html

For Hybrid Clouds, Fog of Confusion Is Burning Away

28 May 2009 16:05:28 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 28 May 2009 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Enterprise Architecture

Most of the attention being paid to cloud computing has focused on public cloud providers, such as Amazon and Google, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors, such as Salesforce.com. However, based on my research, including feedback I've received from readers, I believe that the future of corporate IT, especially when it comes to larger companies, will be based on "hybrid clouds" -- those employing both public and private clouds to meet business goals.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2009/btt090528.html

Retendering an Outsourcing Contract: Attracting New Entrants

20 May 2009 15:44:02 GMT

Cullen, Sara | E-Mail Advisors | 20 May 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Many client organizations nearing the end of an outsourcing contract start to consider whether they should retender the deal. Yet for most, these deliberations are largely about whether or not to do so; very few go beyond the simple yes/no proposition to consider the "how." This is important because the odds are stacked against new entrants (bidders other than the incumbent provider) unless your organization does something about it, and your organization risks expending time and resources on what ends up being a pointless exercise.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090520.html

Sourcing Criteria for SaaS

20 May 2009 15:38:57 GMT

Gangadharan, G.R. | Executive Updates | 20 May 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Traditionally, software has been perceived as a product, requiring possession and ownership in order to receive the desired performance. The transition from software as a product to software as a service (SaaS) is reflected in the distribution of software, where an application is offered as a service to customers through the Internet. The SaaS approach can be viewed as a combination of application service provision and outsourcing.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0905.html

On-Demand, Cloud-Based BI and Data Warehousing: Prime-Time Players in a Down Economy or Over-Hyped Technologies?

12 May 2009 15:19:15 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 12 May 2009 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Business Intelligence

Organizations today may choose from a broad range of on-demand and "cloud-based" BI and data warehousing options, ranging from reporting, dashboards, and focused analytic applications (offered as licensable services) to hosted data integration services and full-blown managed data warehouses. These on-demand providers hope to benefit from a down economy by offering organizations a way to forgo having to implement costly data warehousing and BI applications inhouse, in effect offering to "rent" them a "solution" to help with their data integration, data management, and reporting and analysis needs.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2009/bia090512.html

Security Is Only As Good As the Weakest Link

6 May 2009 16:02:28 GMT

Christie, Scott S. | E-Mail Advisors | 06 May 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

It started innocently enough. A US educational institution (which we shall call WhoU) was looking to update and standardize the PII of current and former students in its electronic database and upgrade its software to automate much of this process on a going-forward basis.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090506.html

Design Your Next Contract to Go Beyond "Cheaper"

22 Apr 2009 15:39:10 GMT

Cullen, Sara | E-Mail Advisors | 22 April 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

As so many clients have told me, the number one thing they would do differently if they could start over would be to design their contracts better -- not from a legal point of view, but from the business perspective. In the current economic climate, the business perspective will have a heavy financial emphasis; thus, it is worth exploring how you might go about measuring a bit more than just "cheaper" from a financial perspective.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090422.html

Hadoop, MapReduce, Cloudera, EC2, and BI

14 Apr 2009 14:58:16 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 14 April 2009 | Business Intelligence; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Recent developments have brought together parallel processing and cloud computing technologies in such a way that they are set to change the way organizations look at analyzing massive amounts of data. In fact, I believe that these developments hold the promise of ushering in a new era in high-end, affordable data analysis. And the cool thing about it is that this era isn't a few years "down the road"; it's here, now. I'm referring to the commercialization of the open source Hadoop and MapReduce distributed processing framework, Amazon's cloud-based version of these tools -- now available on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform for anyone to rent -- and the rise of new startups, such as Cloudera, to help businesses apply these tools to data mining and other enterprise BI applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2009/bia090414.html

What's at the Intersection of Agile and Offshore?

8 Apr 2009 13:19:10 GMT

Cottmeyer, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 08 April 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Agile Project Management

Companies today are trying to lower costs and increase staffing flexibility by taking some, or even all, of their development activities overseas. Many of these same organizations have teams that are using agile development practices to increase quality and improve project performance. What happens when these two trends in our industry intersect?

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090408.html

IT Outsourcing: Building Requirements

7 Mar 2009 13:13:44 GMT

Sánchez Ferreiro, Rafael | Executive Updates | 07 April 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Once a decision has been made to outsource one or more IT services -- to reduce costs, improve service quality, provide adequate technical support, or for other previously identified reasons and always as an integral part of the business plan -- it is crucial to clearly delineate the requirements that will shape the depth and responsibilities of the contract. To do that, it is useful to establish a baseline for the initial conditions under which the service is provided.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0904.html

Open Source BI in the Cloud: A Look at Pentaho 3.0

31 Mar 2009 13:08:49 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 31 March 2009 | Business Intelligence; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In a recent BI Executive Update (see "Open Source BI and Data Warehousing: New Directions," Vol. 9, No. 2), I discussed the possible impact on the BI market caused by end-user organizations adopting open source BI tools. Basically, I wrote that the commercial BI vendors are also offering alternatives to standard software licenses for BI products. The most important are BI tools, applications, and services in the form of software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand (i.e., so-called "cloud-based") BI offerings. In short, I wrote that some end-user organizations are undoubtedly going to consider SaaS/on-demand BI offerings in place of open source BI software in order to take advantage of the benefits afforded by the on-demand model. I added that, in some sense, SaaS/on-demand BI could be seen as a competitor to the appeal of open source BI. But what about giving end-user organizations the choice of deploying open source BI applications in the cloud? That's exactly what open source BI vendor Pentaho is offering.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2009/bia090331.html

Choose Your Organization's Negotiating Stance

25 Mar 2009 14:28:40 GMT

Cohen, Moshe | E-Mail Advisors | 25 March 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

You can measure the effectiveness of your IT sourcing professionals by the prices and terms they get from their vendors, by the quality of the products and services they obtain, by their ability to develop relationships and integrate your company's objectives into their vendors' actions, by the time it takes them to close deals, by the wisdom of their choices as to what vendors to consider, and more. Much of the choice of criteria depends on your time orientation and the balance between long-term value creation and short-term value distribution based on price. In this Advisor, we'll look at the choices you have in your approach to negotiations and what each means to your buyers.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090325.html

Cost-Saving Sourcing Initiatives Revisited: Yesterday's Learning Applied to Today's Cost-Cutting Goals

12 Mar 2009 19:54:28 GMT

Berry, John | Executive Updates | 12 March 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In the past couple of years, organizations have sought sourcing value beyond cost savings. Access to talent and business process innovation are two examples of these more strategic aspirations. Yet, as the economy goes, so go sourcing priorities. Cost-saving sourcing projects are likely the highest priority again this year. While saving money proved elusive for some organizations in the past, those disappointing efforts arm managers today with a deeper understanding of the levers influencing sourcing costs, increasing the likelihood of success.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0903.html

IT Trends Show 25% Hiring, Outsourcing on Rise

11 Mar 2009 19:53:35 GMT

van Tyn, Jeroen | E-Mail Advisors | 11 March 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Staffing has taken an expected hit, according to our recent research on IT trends for 2009.1 While still about half of companies thankfully remain in a stable IT hiring situation, only a quarter of companies are currently hiring, and the remaining 25% are downsizing. In parallel with this movement, we found that project management as a hiring category has dropped by nearly half, indicating fewer IT projects are being undertaken. Outsourcing has continued an upward trend; overall, 22% more companies are outsourcing now as compared to 2007. Companies continue to use nonemployees to provide needed skills while preserving the ability to quickly shed staff as a cost-savings strategy.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090311.html

Get a Clear View of Clouds, and Then Venture into Them

4 Mar 2009 19:39:09 GMT

Murugesan, San | E-Mail Advisors | 04 March 2009 | Cutter IT Journal; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Like electrical service, computing has become a utility. You can draw on your required computing resources -- hardware, software, storage, applications, and infrastructure -- when and where you need them and in the amount you need. Known as cloud computing, this new model of computing allows users to access programs, applications, and other computing resources through the Internet, even from a thin client, which may be a desktop PC, or a mobile device such as a smartphone or a laptop. Of course, cloud computing has limitations, presents risks, and raises concerns, and all these need to be addressed satisfactorily. The recent outages of some popular cloud applications and services instruct us to carefully consider the pros and cons of adopting cloud-based applications and services.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2009/itj090304.html

Key Activities of the Outsourcing Lifecycle: Part I

1 Feb 2009 14:15:12 GMT

Cullen, Sara | Executive Reports | 01 February 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Getting outsourcing wrong can seriously disable any business. On the upside, the accumulated evidence demonstrates that outsourcing, when properly planned, resourced, and accomplished, can deliver significant strategic advantage to firms and governments in every sector. To help you understand the successful outsourcing journey, this year we present a series of four Executive Reports by Dr. Sara Cullen that detail the outsourcing lifecycle. This 2009 series is based on a detailed understanding of the experiences of 107 organizations and is the most thorough description of the outsourcing process in the literature to date.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/reports/2009/01/index.html

IT Services Sourcing: Business vs. Technological Decision

26 Feb 2009 14:05:26 GMT

Sánchez Ferreiro, Rafael | Executive Updates | 26 February 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Performing some IT and communications tasks through internal or external means is not a technological decision; in fact, it is one that focuses on business, and it needs to be framed within the company's general organizational strategy. The reasons that a CIO confronts this dilemma can vary, but they usually involve company pressure to reduce costs, concern for fighting hardware obsolescence, and an intention to reduce the organizational structure. However, there is much more.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0902.html

Staffing Trends 2009

25 Feb 2009 14:04:38 GMT

Adams, Dennis A. | E-Mail Advisors | 25 February 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

The first part of my analysis of this year's IT trends data from a recent Cutter survey1 focuses on the labor within the IT organization, specifically issues associated with outsourcing and with staffing levels. We posed a general question to our respondents asking them to describe their current IT staffing situation. In 2008, the most common response from 46% of the respondents was that their company was currently hiring IT people. This year, however, only 25% of respondents indicate that the company is hiring. In 2008, 10% of respondents indicated that the company was currently downsizing. We compare that to this year's responses, which indicate that fully one-quarter of respondents say their company is downsizing. The good news is that this year half of the respondents indicate that the staffing situation is stable. We step back from this result to see the effect that the economic slowdown has already had in the last quarter of 2008 on projections for 2009. We have no reason to expect that this trend will improve substantially during the coming year. IT organizations will be forced to do the same or more work with fewer people.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090225.html

Only if You Must: Outsourcing Strategic Agile Projects

11 Feb 2009 22:06:27 GMT

Coldewey, Jens | E-Mail Advisors | 11 February 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Before I start to lay out an appropriate outsourcing strategy for agile projects, here is one major piece of advice: If you have the choice, don't do it!

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090211.html

Webinar: How SaaS Trends Impact You - Register Today

24 Feb 2009 13:43:05 GMT

Kaplan, Jeffrey M. | Events | 24 February 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Over the past few months, Cutter Senior Consultant Jeff Kaplan has been analyzing the results of our 4th annual survey on charting the growth of the software-as-a-service market. This year, the data has uncovered a new round of important market trends that have implications to IT and business decision makers. Jeff Kaplan’s been analyzing some of the data in recent Business Technology Trends & Impacts Updates. But in this webinar, he takes it a step further by revealing even more findings, and -- more importantly -- he will answer your questions about the impact these trends may have on your sourcing strategy.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/saastrends.html

An Evolutionary State in Offshoring Management: The Strategic Center of Excellence

28 Jan 2009 19:07:53 GMT

Berry, John | E-Mail Advisors | 28 January 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

A center of excellence (COE) is not a new concept in business management. Even in offshoring, the creation of IT development centers to more effectively coordinate the application development work of distant service providers is a well-established type of COE. Yet the COE concept in offshoring has matured from its development center roots, taking on a more strategic aspect. The features of the evolved offshoring COE that offer value to managers are worth exploring for what they say about the evolution of offshoring as a management discipline.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090128.html

Debriefing the Losing Bidder: An Investment in Future Success

14 Jan 2009 16:15:03 GMT

Cullen, Sara | E-Mail Advisors | 14 January 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

This Advisor looks at debriefing the unsuccessful bidders after a competitive bidding process has closed. This is often treated as an optional process -- and is usually one to be avoided. However, if done well, with the right intent, it is a valuable exercise for all, and can also create support for your future bidding opportunities.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2009/src090114.html

Some Less Obvious Factors Curtailing Cloud Computing Progress

14 Jan 2009 16:08:40 GMT

Cohen, Pini | E-Mail Advisors | 14 January 2009 | Cutter IT Journal; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Cloud computing is a prominent concept in the IT technology world. Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) promise fast return on investment, agility, improved scalability, availability, and more.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2009/itj090114.html

Core Competencies for Outsourcing Lifecycle: Part II

14 Jan 2009 16:06:49 GMT

Cullen, Sara | Executive Updates | 14 January 2009 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Part I of this two-part Executive Update series took you through the core competencies of the first phase of the outsourcing lifecycle: the architect phase.1 The architect phase is where the deal is put together in a strategic sense, cumulating in the detailed contract, the contract management strategy, and the contract scorecard. Here in Part II, we address the remaining three phases of the lifecycle: engage, operate, and regenerate.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2009/srcu0901.html

Think Boldly in Times of Economic Change

31 Dec 2008 15:44:01 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 31 December 2008 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In bad times, there is a tendency to draw inward, to look out for yourself, and to protect what you and yours (family, company, department) has. But this is also a time to think boldly. In good or even middling times, there is a tendency to focus on the present and put things off -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But, clearly, things are broke, so now is the time to fix them. Bad times like these add a sense of urgency to everything. In better times, projects that we know have to be done are often postponed because they are likely to require some sacrifices. But in dire times like these, sacrifice is the order of the day. There is something about bad times that draws everyone together.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2008/src081231.html

Fine-Tuning Your Sourcing Strategy

31 Dec 2008 14:20:17 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Updates | 31 December 2008 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

As the IT outsourcing environment continues to evolve, new demands are being placed on management to improve and refine sourcing policies and governance. During the past several years, there has been a steady move from contracts managing large facilities aimed at cost reduction toward smaller contracts that focus on providing expertise and efficiency around noncore processes of the business. Companies are more likely to consider multivendor contracts in IT, and strategies may include using vendors operating anywhere on the globe. The consequences are making outsourcing more complex and adequate management increasingly vital. This also comes at a time of increased focus on transparency, control, and efficiency in meeting an increased need to watch costs in turbulent economic times.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/updates/2008/srcu0812.html

Recently Added

29 Dec 2008 19:28:13 GMT

The Technology Five-Step: Why You Need to Do the Strategy, Architecture, Delivery, Organization, and Efficiency Dance -- Now by Stephen J. Andriole
Radical Delivery: How the Extreme Gets to Normal in 10 Steps by Stephen J. Andriole
Managing Offshore Development: From Requirements Analysis to Customer Support by Stacey Berlow
Bargaining Power in the Outsourcing Lifecycle by Sara Cullen
SaaS Market Surging by Jeffrey M. Kaplan

The Effect of Recession on Outsourcing Webinar

17 Dec 2008 19:14:42 GMT

Cullen, Sara | Webinars/Multimedia | 17 December 2008 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

In this 40-minute webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Sara Cullen will look at the current state of outsourcing and how a recession may change the outsourcing landscape both current and future contracts as well as the provider market. Sara Cullen’s 20 years of hands-on, global experience supporting organizations in countries experiencing an economic slump gives her unique insight into the effect recession has on outsourcing. She will explore some predictions, the types of contracts likely to become more common, and the long-term implications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/webinar/2008/recessionsourcing.html

SaaS Marketplace Is Changing Rapidly

17 Dec 2008 19:12:27 GMT

Kaplan, Jeffrey M. | E-Mail Advisors | 17 December 2008 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Because nearly every organization has become heavily dependent on technology and many organizations have been dissatisfied with the ROI of their IT operations, they are looking for new ways to acquire and administer their IT systems and business applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/sourcing/fulltext/advisor/2008/src081217.html

Trends and Anti-Trends for 2009

11 Dec 2008 14:45:42 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 11 December 2008 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence; Enterprise Architecture; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Business-IT Strategies

With 2009 looming large, ugly, and just around the corner, it's time for the obligatory prognostications. Boy, is this difficult.... Hmmm. What will next year bring? Any wild guesses?

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2008/btt081211.html