As the economic downturn begins to loosen its grip, many organizations are moving away from cost cutting and toward innovation and growth. The CEOs behind these strategic decisions recognize that in a business environment characterized by higher levels of uncertainty and risk, the ability to generate and sustain innovation programs will be a crucial element of long-term differentiation and growth. Despite this executive-level focus, however, Forrester has found that corporate leadership often lacks the str
The economic downturn now affecting the U.K. is unlikely to have a major impact on overall IT spending by enterprises, but CIOs are exploring a broader range of IT sourcing options to help them better manage IT costs and also deliver cost efficiencies to business.
Ushahidi -- the developer of a free, open-source tool for sourcing crowd information during crises -- has won the NetSquared Mashup Challenge, earning $25,000 in prize money and a $200,000 grant from Humanity United.
Red Hat plans to announce Thursday that it is open-sourcing Red Hat Network (RHN), its Web-based Linux infrastructure management platform, according to CEO Jim Whitehurst.
Last week I provided an overview of Capgemini, one of the winners of a multimillion-dollar systems integration contract with General Motors. I recently spoke to Chris Carrington, Capgemini president of Americas Outsourcing, who gave me an overview of the company (see last week's newsletter). This week, I will share Carrington's thoughts on trends in outsourcing. Here is our Q&A:
The request for proposal (RFP) process has been the bread and butter of purchasing organizations for decades. IT organizations aren't strangers to the process, typically sourcing a significant amount of IT spend through RFPs.
Each sourcing conference brings a new set of countries marketing themselves as the next big thing in offshoring. China, India, Ireland, Malta and South Africa all have active marketing campaigns underway.
In recent newsletters we invited different vendors to help weigh up the pros and cons of single-vendor integrated networks vs. best of breed. Klaus Hofmann, Senior Director Enterprise Solutions Marketing at Juniper wrote to us and outlined a somewhat different viewpoint to those of Cisco and Nortel. According to Klaus: "The truth is there's a better approach: a dual vendor strategy."
Lower cost domestic (LCD) sourcing, or onshoring, could help U.S. economy by creating more jobs and enable companies unable to establish offshore locations to outsource labor at a lower cost.
Moving from first to second generation outsourcing capabilities is a long-term process for many firms, requiring a much stronger governance role from sourcing and vendor management professionals. In order to successfully invest in governance, sourcing professionals must first identify and understand the contributions and requirements of stakeholders throughout the sourcing life cycle. Taking a strong approach to governance and process oversight will promote an agile and high quality sourcing process, maxim
The decision over whether to move your organization's IT to the cloud can be a daunting one. After all, it means a wholesale change in the sourcing and delivery of IT products and services. However, many companies are making the leap, at least for select capabilities--a recent by CDW of 1,242 IT professionals found that more than half of organizations are moving a variety of capabilities to the cloud. And a majority of them are recognizing cost savings and increased profits, according to another study by R
Sun confirmed Monday that it's open sourcing its Java SE and Java ME under the GNU general public license, so will Sun look to use the GPL for other offerings it has already open sourced, including the OpenSolaris version of its operating system?
In the ebb and flow of technology trends, procurement models have generally been among the less volatile elements. However, extraordinary forces have emerged with the potential to seriously disrupt sourcing models.
Apple may finally get clearance to set up its stores in India, following the Indian government’s decision Monday to liberalize rules requiring local sourcing of part of the products sold in foreign-owned stores.
Last week's announcement that wireless LAN system maker Aruba intends to snap up WLAN management company Airwave Wireless for $37 million left me pondering future enterprise approaches to sourcing. If and when WLANs reach a par status with wired LANs, will the primary enterprise suppliers remain the traditional router/switch companies? Or will they shift to wireless-centric companies?
VMware CEO Paul Maritz said the company has considered open sourcing its hypervisor and supporting virtualization tools made by competitors, but didn't give any indication about if or when those changes will be implemented.
Seven months after dismissing OpenDaylight, HP has raised its membership in the vendor-driven open source SDN consortium to its highest and most expensive tier.
Big IT service providers are offering up their skills as service integrators, promising to help CIOs reign in their multi-sourcing messes. But can this "fox watching the henhouse" model really work?
The key to getting the maximum value out of every dollar spent on IT, according to GE executive director of sourcing Sam Guertin, is a combination of in-depth knowledge and tough negotiation.
Enterprise IT managers invest in new technologies, adopt different sourcing models and build stronger ties with the business in an effort to weather the current economic storm.