Business Service Management Hub

The Hub Commentary_

Outsourcing has never been for a cost saving measure.  You must manage the vendor and once in a service agreement, anything requested beyond the originally contracted service comes with a fee.  Let’s face it, additional services and service requirements begin to change as soon as the ink is dry and where the providers starts making their profit.

Cloud computing provides platforms, infrastructure and commons services, but affords flexibility to they buyer in the management of the services without owning the infrastructure or technology in place with the cloud provider.  This does put the ownership of service management on the contracting organization.

Cloud computing is disrupting the traditional outsourcing model as well as in-house IT organizations which drives innovation into organizations.  When properly instrumented and managed, organizations have much to gain in re-thinking their sourcing and IT infrastructure strategies.

Where are you with your sourcing and infrastructure strategy?

Michele

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For CIOs, the halcyon days of IT systems and architecture that were built and managed entirely in-house, or partly outsourced to a few mammoth vendors, are gone. In its place a hybrid model rises — one that maintains elements of the traditional IT foundation, but also takes advantage of new technology and platforms as they emerge.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

As I began reading this article I thought there is a CIO in tune with her business.  R&D is the heart and soul of pharmaceutical companies and IT needs to work to drive business growth and cost saving in these days of transformation.  AstraZeneca is on the outside of the recent Fortune 500 list, but if innovation continues with this strategy in mind, I would expect to see growth out of them in the coming years.

I found the commentary interesting that follows the article.  Sales organizations have one and only one metric, are they selling and did they hit the number.  Sales professionals know this and while AZ may have lost members of the sales organization for a variety of reasons, I suspect, I applaude the Angela’s strategic thinking and confidence not to take a back seat in driving innovation into the organization with technology.

I ask, how are you driving innovation into your organization with technology?

Michele

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The strategic review undertaken each summer by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca acquired additional significance this year in the wake of a first quarter in which sales fell by 11%, to $7.3 billion, and earnings plummeted by 44%. Resultant investor criticism cost chief executive David Brennan and chairman Louis Schweitzer their jobs in recent weeks.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

I’ve often written that you do not outsource for cost savings.  Cost savings can be achieved when right sourcing and giving up control, taking advantage of the economies of scale offered by a provider and allowing standard services (the commodity services of your organization) rather than custom services.

I find the commentary that follows the article interesting.  While I might agree that it may be an article for soft selling Google Cloud Services, you would be foolish to think any vendor doesn’t write to their strengths, but also wonder if some of the commentary comes from those IT organizations reluctant to change?

You don’t go the cloud just because you can, you right source it and must manage it accordingly and then you can spend your budget with the greatest gain.   In a CIO article today citing an MIS Quarterly study, for every dollar/employee invested in technology, twelve dollars/employee can be realized in sales gain.  The time for management and innovation investment is upon us and outsourcing the commodity.

How are you investing in the cloud?

Michele

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The economics of cloud computing are driving down the cost structure of business so far and so fast that it’s scary, Google CIO Ben Fried says.

“It deeply disturbed me … in 2006, 2007 consumer companies were forcing efficiencies on a scale never seen before,” Fried said Thursday during remarks at the Bloomberg Link Enterprise Technology Summit in New York.  (Read Full Article…)