Right Sourcing and Cloud Computing - Getting the Mix RightOn September 15th, the AITP Atlanta Chapter hosted its fifth annual CIO Roundtable Dinner at the beautiful Crown Plaza Ravinia in Dunwoody, Ga., the chapter’s new meeting facilities. This year’s event provided valuable insights into the ways in which Atlanta’s information technology leaders are addressing major trends facing IT departments today. The CIO’s represented a broad cross section of Atlanta’s leading technology-focused organizations with perspectives for global, public sector, and smaller entrepreneurial IT shops as well. In this article, the CIO’s discuss their organizations’ use of right sourcing and cloud computing. Two upcoming articles will cover the “consumerization” of IT, and the security issues surrounding these initiatives, and what CIO’s consider in making hiring decisions. Each of the CIO’s present weighed in on the pros and cons of outsourcing and discussed strategies for achieving the right balance. Most agreed that, in the past several years since outsourcing began to change the IT business model, we have gained a better perspective on how to achieve the right mix of in-house resources and outsourcing. “I think many companies have run really far to the right as far as outsourcing,” said Dudley White, CIO for Equifax (TAS). “What you see now is a kind of correction as we bring back in house certain key activities and functions.”
Curtis Rawlings, Assistant CIO for DeKalb County Georgia, agreed: “We’ve rushed as an industry one way, now we’re kind of pulling back because it just doesn’t work for every situation. We use outsourcing for efficiency and cost savings, but I have to make sure that when we’ve outsourced development, we can support it internally.” “In the past, it was really about pricing pressures,” continued Alan Sukalsky. “Today, with outsource offerings from LatinAmerica, China, and other geographies, it’s more about quality.”
Often the decision to use outsourcing is dependent upon the type of software service and business involved. Alan Stukalsky, CIO for Randstad Corporation pointed out that, in his company’s Professional business sector, they do more outsourcing because they need to complete projects fast and ramp up quickly. “Our IT team is split in two,” he says. Because we have differences in what we want to own and what is our intellectual capital. On our General Staffing business, we do more [of our development] in house.”
Karen Painter, Senior VP of Enterprise Applications for Turner Broadcasting System, also strives to determine the right mix. “We certainly have plenty of software services where outsourcing makes sense,” she says. “Within our expense reporting and some of our benefits package services, for example we’re looking at outsourcing for the purpose of staff augmentation. In our industry however, there are many areas where no products are available for purchase on the market. In these areas, we have development efforts going on that are core to our business. Some of these, we believe, give us a competitive advantage, and these we’re not going to outsource.”
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