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After many years of seemingly every shred of bad news about outsourcing being writ large, and nodded over ‘knowingly’ by naysayers, a degree of increased maturity has helped improve the course and eventual fate of a greater proportion of engagements. Experience has taught the outsourcing industry’s providers and customers some hard lessons, hopefully for the benefit of many organisations in the next few years. Quick bucks, sticking to the letter of the contract unless paid more, and one-size-fits-all deals ?SC? After many years
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/04/2007 - Alan Rodger
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The UK public sector is organised in a complex way, and has a culture that does not lend itself to centralised IT project specification and governance. This must be taken into account in large public sector IT projects if the chances of their success are to be improved. In this article, I propose a new approach that I call “Proof-Win” that is based on delivering a successful and realistic proof of concept, followed by extending the project only when the business case is proven and key stakeholders are wo…
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/04/2007 - Sarah Burnett
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Managed IT Services are increasing in popularity, and the practice is already quite established in mid-sized organisations (500-1,500 employees). In the March 2007 issue of Butler Group Review we discussed ‘The Improved face of Managed Services’; however, not all organisations will find that Managed Services is the right option for them in all areas that Managed Services cover.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/04/2007 - Maxine Holt
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HCL Infrastructure Services Division (ISD) is a specialist in the rapidly growing outsourcing market area of remote infrastructure management, a service which it can offer from offshore locations, incorporating the price advantage of that model. However, the company’s differentiating characteristics are far broader than simply lower costs, as it has a long-established practice that complements infrastructure management with a wide range of services that meet requirements throughout the outsourcing lifecy…
Technology Audits - published 30/03/2007 - Alan Rodger
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Whilst driving to work earlier this week, I heard an article on the radio saying that around 12% of Internet users in the UK have been the victims of on-line fraud. I subsequently followed the article up on the BBC’s Web site, to find it was being reported that fewer than half of the UK’s 29 million adult Internet users believe that they are responsible for protecting personal information on-line.
OpinionWire Articles - published 29/03/2007 - Maxine Holt
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Some organisations look towards outsourcing to assist them in achieving their business objectives, and some prefer to retain the delivery of IT services in-house. However, Butler Group is seeing an increasing number of organisations not only using outsourcing to complement the services they are delivering in-house, but also implementing a multi-sourced model - that is, having a number of different providers deliver various aspects of IT requirements.
Technology Management and Strategy Reports - published 19/03/2007 - Alan Rodger, Maxine Holt, Teresa Jones, Tim Jennings
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Managed Services Providers (MSPs) deliver and manage network-based services, applications, and equipment to customer organisations. Managed services can be delivered as a one-to-many or one-to-one service; the former service being used by multiple customers, and the latter having a dedicated service between provider and customer. Payment for both of these services is generally on a usage basis; for example, the number of desktops supported, or the number of transactions processed.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/03/2007 - Maxine Holt
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In Accra, Ghana, there is a model example of private business serving public interests. This is the “BusyInternet”, the largest privately-owned ICT and Internet service centre in Africa. BusyInternet started in 2001, and represents a promising approach to helping Africans gain access to Internet, Information Technology, and Business services all under one roof. It is a fairly large roof at that, incorporating a 100 seat Internet café, catered conference and training rooms, serviced offices and project ro…
Butler Group Review Articles - published 01/03/2007 - Terry White
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Towards the end of last month, Satyam, a Hyderabad-based IT services provider (and the fourth-largest in India), announced its quarterly results (covering October-December 2006) and was vilified on the stock market, with its shares falling 8%. Even though net profit increased 24.3% compared to the same quarter the previous year (after a subsidiary sale had been taken out of the calculation), investors were not happy with the results – mainly because the results of its rivals have been better.
OpinionWire Articles - published 22/02/2007 - Maxine Holt
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Last week the UK’s Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) published the results of a feasibility study, carried out on its behalf by London Libraries Development Agency (LLDA), for a single membership card for all of London’s public libraries. The card is likely to be a smartcard and the possibility of linkage with Oyster is being considered. Oyster is a smart ticketing solution that is successfully operated by Transport for London (TfL). There are over five million cards in circulation and it als…
OpinionWire Articles - published 08/02/2007 - Sarah Burnett
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Patni Computer Systems (Patni) is the sixth largest of the Indian service provider companies in terms of scale. It has achieved impressive growth, and has a variety of service lines, ranging from ubiquitous types such as application-related services to less common variants such as product and engineering services. Organisations of all kinds are increasingly turning to outsourcing either to take everyday business or IT tasks off their hands, or to achieve more advanced objectives such as transformational …
Technology Audits - published 05/02/2007 - Alan Rodger
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The Christmas on-line sales figures were announced last week. For the ten weeks running up to Christmas, UK consumers spent UK£7.66 billion, which represents a 54% increase from the 2005 Christmas figures of UK£4.98 billion.
OpinionWire Articles - published 01/02/2007 - Roy Illsley
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It was reported last week that various problems with the Indian outsourcing industry are forcing UK and European companies to look elsewhere for their offshore provision. The problems that have been cited include big wage rises, skills shortages, and incidents around data security.
OpinionWire Articles - published 07/12/2006 - Maxine Holt
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