Business IT Outsourcing

“IT executives increasingly implement marketing initiatives to improve the communications with their business customers. But these efforts often focus solely on the brand aspects of the services under the IT’s control without understanding the business’ perception of IT. To maximize the success, IT must add business satisfaction assessments to its tool kit. Understanding business satisfaction requires qualitative and quantitative data that capture customer expectations and perceptions through different types of interactions such as interviews, panels, focus groups, complaint systems, and surveys. This report provides best-practice recommendations, survey templates, and questions to guide IT executives through the deployment of a business satisfaction assessment. It applies Forrester’s deep expertise in external customer satisfaction to the interface between business customers and their internal IT suppliers.” says a new Forrester report.

I have served on countless business application development teams within several organizations in the Southwest Ohio and Cincinnati Information Technology community, one thing I can say is that most IT organizations do not gauge business satisfaction with IT business solutions.  I have served in only a couple of organizations where the business serves on the IT governance committee.  An organization does not have to be “big” to have an IT governance committee.  No matter what the size of the organization decisions are made as to priorities in IT work.  IT governance does not have to be a long drawn out process or take great time commitment from the business or IT executives, but business involvement in IT governance goes a long way in gaining business buy-in as you roll out the IT business solutions to the business.

Involvement in IT governance is just one way that many organizations in the Greater Cincinnati area can improve the IT-business relationship.  The Forrester report goes into ways to solicit and gauge business satisfaction with IT business solutions.  Doing so should affect decisions concerning not only IT business solution delivery but also IT Infrastructure and IT outsourcing initiatives.

 

Seems like it has been a while since I have had a chance to do a post.  For the last 3 weeks things have been absolutely crazy in our IT consulting world, but in a good way.  We had a chance to go to the Techserve Alliance national conference in Las Vegas.  I have heard all the jokes, including the one about it staying in Vegas.   We did learn that just because you are pre-checked with the airline, does not mean that your bags are.   We got our bags checked with literally a minute to spare and fortunately all made it back to Cincinnati.

Upon return, we signed a support contract for a new customer.  They trust us enough to outsource their entire IT applications support to us.  We have a real life example of an IT Strategy that was discussed at the conference (See #3).  Not only was IT strategy discussed but business strategy as well.  Here are some highlights:

1. Market Differentiation - customers have lots of choices, how will you stand out?

2. Improve Systems and methodology for delivering service- excellence, efficiency, depth of service.

3. Outsource what you can-eliminate the busy work that does not add strategic value.

4. Deal with the economy being slow to recover till 2012, spend your money wisely, hire wisely, fire quickly, and refine what is working, stop what is not.           

5. Build Alliances with like minded providers in different industries and sell collaboratively to serve the customers' need.

My favorite of these five is number four.  Said another way, its takin’ the basset hound to the farm.  I’ll expand more on that in my next post.

• Network security specialist: A person familiar with intrusion detection systems.
• Penetration testers: Someone who can assess a system's potential vulnerabilities.
• Incident handlers: People who understand attack methodology and can apply critical thinking skills to respond to incidents.
• Forensics Analyst: The person who looks for evidence after an attack.
• Research Analyst: The person to keep abreast technological advances in incident response activities.
• Team Leader: Leads the team through crises and communicates to the business incident activities and cost to the business.

• Preparation and Training: for both prevention and incident response.
• Identification: fast identification of an occurring attack and its impact on the IT infrastructure can help in minimizing the duration and cost of clean-up.
• Containment: Once an attack has been identified, steps must be taken to minimize the effects of the attack.
• Recovery and Analysis: The recovery period allows analysis and lessons learned of What happened? Why did it happened? Was the response effective?

1. Irreflexive  - means that the two roles cannot be filled by the same instance of an object.  Our Manager supervises Employee fact type is irreflexive meaning a particular manager cannot be his own supervisor. 
2. Symmetric - means that if a relationship exists between two instances of an object, then the same relationship exists in the opposite direction.  If Ohio borders Indiana, then Indiana borders Ohio.  Our Manager supervises Employee fact type is not symmetric.
3. Asymmetric - is mostly the opposite of symmetric.  If a relationship between two instances of an object, then the same relationship does not exist in the opposite direction.  Our Manager supervises Employee fact type is asymmetric.  Note that asymmetry implies irreflexivity.
4. Antisymmetric - is kind of like symmetric with asymmetry in specific instances.  So in the antisymmetric relationship, if the same instance of an object is playing both roles of a fact, then it is symmetric, but if different instances of the object are playing the roles of a fact, then it is asymmetric.  Here is an example of an antisymmetric fact type: Number is greater than or equal to Number.  It is symmetric as long as the numbers are the same, otherwise it is asymmetric.
5. Intransitive - Intransitive has to do with chaining relationships together.  If Object A relates to object B, and Object B relates to Object C, then intransitivity say that Object A may not have that same relation with Object C.  Consider parents and children.  Joe is the father of Mark who is the father of Tom, then Joe can't be the father of Tom unless there are some illegal behavior going on.  That is intransitive.  In most organizations, the Manager -> Employee relationship is intransitive.  Note Intransitivity implies Irreflexivity.
6. Acyclic - Means that for any object, I can't follow the chain far enough to get back to the starting object.  A parent can not be it's own descendant.  This constraint is very expensive to impliment in terms of processing resources, so it is typically not specified.  Usually Acyclic relationships are specified as Asymmetric.  Note Acyclic implies Asymetric which implies Irreflexive.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY

Check out this video, it’s so dead on.  Many of us in the IT staffing industry have dealt with this first hand.  “I can get <fill in IT skill> resources for $20 an hour less from XYZ".  Companies’ sometimes act like they are buying a commodity product like copier paper, rather than skilled IT consultants. 

No manger would ever dream of going to one of their employees and saying, I can get Bob to do your job for $10,000 less per year, yet it’s becoming more prevalent in the IT staffing business. 

One of the huge issues facing our industry is the use of H1-B IT consultants.  Our leaders in Washington are looking legislation specifically targeting IT consulting firms that use H1-B consultants to limit our ability to do so.  This is in the interest of saving American jobs.  Unfortunately, the bill currently being debated does not limit multi-national companies, so only the smaller companies will be hurt. 
 

I would love to use local IT consultants for all of our engagements, but the price pressure dictates we do things we normally wouldn’t chose to do.   But then again, we’re really just hurting ourselves.

What do those 3 words have in common?  They are certainly 3 words that you usually don’t use in a single conversation, let alone a single sentence. But in this day and age, maybe we should.  Let me ask the question this way:  How would a pandemic outbreak affect your IT infrastructure given the layoffs forced by the economy?

Not only do we need to worry about IT infrastructure, how about business continuity?  IT managers need to look at business continuity and disaster plans.  The problem today is that consolidations, layoffs and restructurings may have scrambled response plans. People who were once part of a critical team may now be collecting unemployment.

While the CDC isn't calling the swine flu outbreak a pandemic, and the World Health Organization has raised its threat level, which at Level 4 in its six-level scale because the swine flu currently has "sustained human-to-human transmission."

I’m recommending that managers review their call lists and decision-making chains. There could be a weakness in plans because of organizational restructuring that people need to very quickly take a look at.

If an organization does not have a specific pandemic plan, any plan that considers a "significant absence" of employees may work as an alternative plan.

The standard model used in pandemic planning is to consider what would happen to a business if 40% of the workforce was absent for an extended period of time.

In 2006, in response to earlier concerns about the bird flu, Gartner Inc. offered specific suggestion to IT departments, such as storing 42 gallons of water per data center worker, enough for a six-week quarantine.  This may seem a little extreme, but I have to ask the question, How prepared are you?  Maybe a our IT Wellness Check could shed some light

The news this week is Oracle buying Sun. As a Java application development guy, this is very important news. I recently wrote about my feelings for an IBM merger, so this pairing is interesting. Larry Ellison had big praise for Solaris and Java, but nothing on MySQL. This is my take on the big points and questions I have.
Solaris
It is apparent that Oracle wants an OS to be a full service enterprise application development provider. They want to compete against Microsoft and IBM. I don’t see Oracle doing anything to hurt Solaris. I think Oracle can do a better job than Sun in this regard, as long as they use Sun’s customer service model.
Java
Oracle is a big Java user. The question for me is will Oracle "IBMify" Java? Creating proprietary hooks where none is needed to make a profit is dead wrong. Java is the dominate language, but other languages were dominate in the past. If Oracle can resist the temptation and just be the caretaker, java application development will be dominant for some time. If not, Java is open source, which means a "free" Java will be around, but multiple, incompatible versions of Java will kill it. I see Scala as a viable successor to Java, so I think the fragmentation issue will disrupt application development, but not move everything to .Net.
NetBeans
The fate of my favorite IDE is in much better hands with Oracle than IBM. NetBeans is a big part of Sun’s offerings, so I don’t think there is an issue.
MySQL
Many people lament that Oracle has MySQL finally. There is some well founded concern, but I see Oracle using MySQL as an entry into smaller markets. If you can brand MYSQL as Oracle’s "lite" database, then small businesses can use MySQL, and then seamlessly move to Oracle when the business grows.
Questions
What about JavaFX? This is the first step to the great convergence of write one set of code to run on mobile desktop and web. How much autonomy will Sun staff have? What about Glassfish? Only time will tell.

As an enterprise application development team member, I have had a long history with both companies. I started in this business with IBM’s CICS and COBOL. Publishing one update every 10 years or so, COBOL could not compete with the newer languages of the time (Java). IBM only started looking at viable additions or enhancements after losing lots of business. Having seen what IBM did with their languages, the outlook is not so rosy with Java. I also came from a vendor (Silverstream), which took Java and created proprietary extensions. When Silverstream got bought out by Novell and disappeared, my focus was to convince employers that I did in fact know Java. Since then, I have had a personal dislike for non-standard "enhancements" to technology. IBM’s WebSphere falls directly into that category. Taking a perfectly usable Apache web container and adding "enhancements" so it doesn’t follow apache documentation, but needs IBM support makes me angry. Their JDK implementation leaves many things to be desired. IBM has a history of taking open source technologies and contorting them so only IBM trained personnel can use them. To most application development team guys, IBM is a huge thorn in their sides. It is management not IT that purchases big blue.
It’s not just Java, but many of my other favorite technologies that IBM may toss. Glassfish is a free, easy to use application server that uses the latest EE5 code base. WebSphere 7.0 has been recently released to use IBM’s EE5 edition. 2 years after Glassfish! I am a long time MySQL user, I don’t ever want to use DB2. I can’t imagine using DB2 for my passion projects. NetBeans has made great strides in the IDE space, and is becoming the choice of many application development team members. Whether you use all IBM or all Sun is moot; we have choice and competition, but not for long.

IBM’s lack of focus on marketing and developer mind share (anyone remember OS/2?) are important reasons why I hope this doesn’t happen. In a perfect world, Google would swoop in and buy them. Their cultures are very similar (many former Sun people work at Google), and the competition would still be there.
Yes, many of these technologies are open source. They will not just disapear; but without corporate backing, they will not see light of day in the corporate space. The reason Red Hat and SUSE are major Linux distributions is that Enterprises can have Service contracts. If IBM chooses to abandon them, I don't see widespread use, unless the technology is overwhelmingly compelling.

I was talking with someone at lunch yesterday about the economy.  Our consensus was the news media is talking down the economy.   While things are not great, they are not as bad as the media portrays.   This is especially true in IT staffing.  The chart below shows that IT employment has come down slightly from the peek last year.  Employment levels are up significantly from just a few years ago. 


If you would like to read the full report click here.   By the way, the restaurant we were having lunch at was full as well.  

If you're looking for a way to save some money in the tough economy, you may want to look for some help from an IT staffing firm.  Beyond typical staffing assistance, most IT staffing companies also employ IT consultants and software designers who can all combine to save you money, increase productivity, and increase your efficiency.

Believe it or not companies like mine, Star Base Inc., can do all of this.  Over and beyond placing candidates for your projects, Star Base can help improve productivity by ensuring that your company is using the right software for the right application.  If application development is not your organizations area of expertise IT staffing firms can recommend new software or write custom software that can meet your organizational needs.

Information technology staffing firms can help increase your efficiency.  My organization has developed subject expertise over the past twenty years.  We know all of the tricks and shortcuts that many people do not know.  Not only can we develop business applications and process improvement we can train users how to do tasks faster and can help identify jobs at your organization that can be handled by a computer but are not.  This usually saves companies time and investment

Finally, IT staffing companies can help reduce costs.  Yes there will be an initial investment, which is a very tough decision these days. However, in the long run they will find ways to save money and more than make up for their initial costs.  If the IT professionals can find ways to have software perform jobs currently being performed by company staff, they will free that staff up for you to use on company core competencies that can produce more goods and services while reducing payroll

When excess waste is minimized increased productivity follows. So you see, IT staffing companies offer much more than simply placing IT personnel.  They have the expertise to help cut back on wasteful activities and help you focus on activities that are efficient and designed to maximize your margins.  In a highly competitive marketplace, where all of us are stretched to do more with less, this is a competitive advantage that is worth having. 
 

I’m on the advisory board of Xavier University’s IT section.  At our meeting yesterday, I had an opportunity to meet with several of the students that are in the MIS program.  One of the things that came up several times was the condition of Cincinnati IT jobs.  The students are looking for either internships or jobs when they graduate this May.

While the Cincinnati, IT job market might be tight right now, I think it is more important than ever for potential employers to take a look at these students.  The Xavier, students might not have as many of the IT TLA's (three letter acronyms) as students from other Cincinnati area universities, but they do have a good business foundation and a good knowledge of business analytics. 

One of the questions I asked the students was if they were leaning more toward the business side, such as business analysis, or more toward the development side.  Their answers were almost evenly divided.  All of them understand the business value of IT and that successful companies have to take advantage of IT solutions. 

I read today that unemployment has risen to 7.6%.  Yes, its official – we are in a recession.  However, that does not mean there isn’t opportunity because there is.  If everyone believed everything the press is saying our economy does not have a chance and the United States is going to cease to exist.

I also read today that the U.S. government is going to re-visit its parameters for H-1B Visas because they are being used by recruiting body shops rather than giving foreign nationals the real opportunity that they seek.  This means that application developers and specialist are going to be able to make up ground that they have lost to foreign nationals in the past.

My suggestion is for developers to increase their skill-set now before the economy begins to get worse.  Information technology consulting has never been a steady business it always has had peaks and valleys.  When the economy is good projects are plentiful.  When it starts to decline projects usually come to a grinding halt.  But is you have multiple skills it decrease your odds of becoming a statistic.

Organizations try to do more and more internally rather than outsource it when the economy begins to falter.  The more skills a person has the better chances one has to stay employed.  This holds true for IT staffing, development and consulting.  Additionally, when a developer or infrastructure architect can show an organization how to safe time, investment and people through the implementation of their solution they will endear themselves to that particular organization.

Good information technology strategy can more than pay for itself in this economy.  Organizations everywhere are dependent on technology and they need processes to become dynamically automated so they can accomplish more with less while the move towards models of efficiency that will contribute to the productivity of the organization.

Make it your mission to learn more applications and methodologies that can greatly increase the productivity of any company.  To do this is to build value for the organization and you by ensuring there will always be a job for those that are willing to innovate and create a better way.  

This is your opportunity.  Make it happen!

Not everything I do is related to process improvement. As an application development member, I have an interest in all things new. I am planning to get Google phone in the future, so I pay attention to the new apps, especially the controversial ones. Google latitude is an application that can track your friends and family in real time using triangulation and Google maps. On the surface, it sounds great. How many of us have used our cell phones to find family or friends in a store? The paranoid in me says how easy is it for stalkers and government to track me? Currently the point is somewhat moot, because the accuracy is good to only 1000 feet. I don’t really need to know where people are, so I probably won’t use it. What do you think?

Windows 7 will have seven different versions, ranging from doing everything to only running 3 applications concurrently. Of the many problems that Vista has, one of them was the confusing versioning that Microsoft employed. Consumers and businesses can’t figure out which one is right for them. Win2K had one version, and XP had 3 versions. The only reason for this separation is to make more money on confusion. The simple thing to do is to have a home, business, and enterprise version. The better thing to do is to have one version that does everything, which can be controlled from the install. At the very least, I could download those modules that I need. As an application development team member, I need some things that a business would need, and some things a home user would use. To cripple an OS without necessary features (networking for example) is silly and useless for me. If only they followed the Ubuntu install.

Recently, a fellow application team member got fired. This development team member was brought in on a three month right to hire, but only lasted two months. I have talked about how to be better, but this is a great case study in what not to do.

• Take excessive time off - When starting a new opportunity, give your client or boss a heads up on that vacation you planned before joining the organization. 99% of the time, it is ok. Not telling your boss that you are taking a day or two off is not a good move for experienced employees, and it is worse for those starting off. Ideally, you have had time off between assignments, so non-emergency time should be kept to a minimum.
• Not being confident – It can be scary taking a new job, but you have to show the same confident attitude on the job as you displayed in the interview. Never use the phrase "I am afraid to lose." Application development team members need to show that they have a handle on the situation. Phrases like the one above shows fear.
• Being unprepared – showing up for meetings without paper and pen, and not having documents available during a discussion is good way to have your peers and management lose faith in you. When starting out, try to ask one good question. It demonstrates that you have some level of involvement.
• Not communicating your status – By not telling management what you are doing, allows management to guess what you are doing. Never let management guess. A weekly status shows everyone that you are being productive, when it may appear that you are not. It is a valuable tool if a fellow application development team member tries to place blame on you.
• Not getting rest – all application development team members have had outside influences that affected our performance. If you are in a high level meeting with your boss, your boss’ boss, and your boss’ boss’ boss in the room, do not fall asleep. That does seem to get everyone’s attention.

You first 90 days are your "golden" days. You should be alert, ready to work, and try to find some area where you can show that you are productive. In reality, this should be every day, but a leveling off usually occurs. In good times you may have been able to do some of these bad behaviors and get away with it. In tough economic times, employers have a bigger pool of eager workers to perform their tasks, so do any of the above could get you sacked. Do all of the above, and you will be fired.

There is trouble in the near future for talent needs and it is coming in various flavors:
 

• According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, in 2010 over 10M jobs in the United States will go unfilled – in 2022 it will be 30M jobs

• College graduation rates are down to 54% and 75% of new jobs will require a college degree

• Making the wild assumption that Baby Boomers (44 – 62 years old) will leave the workforce when they are retirement eligible (is that at 55 or 65?) – there isn’t enough Gen X (28 – 43 years old) to replace them (78M Boomers versus 40M Gen Xers). Gen Y (7 – 27 years old) is big (70M), but still lacks the experience (hello…most haven’t even graduated) to make an immediate impact

• The average time in a company for Gen X is four years; for Gen Y it’s more like two and while the Boomers have been pretty loyal in the past, but the technology market hasn’t exactly rewarded them for that loyalty.

• According to an AARP survey of Boomers - 31% of mature workers became responsible for a dependent parent; 23% had an adult child move back home; and 16% were providing child care or day care for grandchild.  50 to 80 hour work weeks, while tolerated by Boomers and some Gen Xers, won’t be tolerated by Gen Y and won’t be of interest to Boomers as they ‘mature’ in their careers and many take on the care of family members. So, since everyone knows that a 40 hour work week for technology professionals is a joke – who’s going to be doing all the work?

Well, I was thinking there are a couple of answers here but those answers will involve a major paradigm shift in the way we think about our workforce today. 

Baby Boomers are learning very quickly that retirement will have to be postponed because of our current economic conditions.  This wealth of knowledge can be instrumental in assisting those organizations that are struggling with Information Technology Staffing because these folks are going to be around a little longer than they planned!
 
Information technology departments will have to create a hybrid workforce model that will be made up of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Gen Yers.  Still another approach is to work closer with IT outsourcing partners to ensure you have the talent that you need.  My organization, STAR BASE, Inc. makes finding superior IT talent for IT jobs a fulltime pursuit.

Finally, another emerging model that will be downsized IT department with only mission critical personnel and several part-timers that will be used from time-to-time.  This model will be subsidized from time-to-time by outsourced to information technology staffing partners that can assist in bridging the gap.

The global economy is tanking, layoffs are everywhere but organizations need to remain positive and work through these difficult times.  Information technology is no exception to this statement.  Often times when companies decide to cut budgets the information technology department is a prime target to be cut.

So, what can a prudent CIO do to address budget cuts while still operating his/her organization at a competitive advantage?   Here are some suggestions that may help:

• Ratios - Look at your ratio of onsite permanent IT employees.  Perhaps you could reduce the number of permanent employees to only those that are essential to the mission.  Outsourcing the rest of the work to a local firm often times is far more cost effective than permanent employees.

• Time-to-Market – If products and applications can be delivered faster, though a combination of in house personnel and outsourced talent then companies will reap the benefits sooner.  Work closer with your outsourcing partners to save time, investment and even the dreaded budgets cuts.

• Revisit your Processes – By working closely with your outsourcing partner.  If your team can find how to deliver applications an automated process with fewer touches and less defects there will be less time and money spent on re-works.  IT departments must leverage knowledge, experience and tools to gain a competitive advantage while decreasing cost.

• Productivity Improvements – Your internal and your external outsourcing IT partner must embrace being able to accomplish more in less time and at a lower investment.  The true business value of IT will be felt across the enterprise.

• Negotiate Your Rates – Any true business partner or business technology consulting firm, will be open to rate reductions if you are willing to negotiate a long term partnership.  Dedicated consultants are looking for long-term business partnerships.  If you are willing to commit to a set amount of hours they will br eilling to negotiate rates with you.

Application development outsourcing and IT staffing outsourcing can have many benefits in these times of economic challenge.  Your organization still needs to operate on a day-to-day basis.  Re-think your approach for the mutual benefit of your organization and your outsourcing partner.
 

According to an international survey of senior business executives by global consultancy, McKinney Rogers, business leaders believe that putting their faith in developing the skills and abilities of their workforce is the best way to reduce an organization’s exposure to the risk of recession.

With recent media attention focusing on the impact of sub-prime lending and the current global economic downturn turning into a full-blown recession, the survey, which encompassed Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific, and the US, was designed to gauge awareness, perceptions and trends on the issue and what can be done to minimize the risk of a recession’s impact on global business.

I would suggest that the same holds true for independent developers as well.  If you want to ensure employability you need to be a life long learner with multiple skill-sets to assure yourself that you always have skills to offer regardless of the development platform.

I am a person who makes his living assisting firms to reach their technological and operational goals while the discover the real value of IT. One of the challenges that I face is trying to place the right IT talent into these organizations.  As you read this blog you do not need me to tell you that the job market is extremely tight and companies are being very selective in who they hire and who they do not hire.

Not too long ago, application developers and technology consulting firms could concentrate on a given skill-set or set of tools and find plenty of opportunities to meet their offerings.  That appears not to be the case any longer.  Organizations of all sizes have multiple needs and they have learned that this world waits for no one.  That means they must continually re-access technology, work processes and skill-sets to meet the demands of their marketplace.

These are the reasons why any Internet application developer or web application developer must learn multiple skill-sets to make sure they continually improve their value in the marketplace.  It is no longer enough to have just RPG skills. Clients are looking for individuals that know RPG, J.D. Edwards and possibly some Java skills.  For web develops we are finding that knowing Dreamweaver, Photoshop and ColdFusion are not enough.  Depending on the firm that we are recruiting for they also want the people they hire to know PHP, MSQl, AJAX, .Net, Java and Javascript.

Want to make sure you’re always employable during these trying economic times?  Increase your skill-set and make yourself more valuable to those organizations that are hiring.