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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Onshore Advantage: A Guide to Evaluating IT Outsourcing Options

Over the last decade there has been a significant focus on outsourcing and offshoring critical Information Technology (IT) functions using a variety of outsourcing models and global locations. Business leaders and IT executives now have a myriad of choices available to assist with reducing IT costs, increasing productivity, managing business surges, and shortening timelines to bring products to market. Today, geographic location is more critical than ever to ensure that you meet your organization’s IT strategy, project and corporate goals.

Previously, clients were willing to deal with substandard work because the labor rate and free rework made it acceptable, but as offshore rates and other costs climb, client tolerance for poor work has dropped dramatically.” -Forrester Research, Inc.

Based on a number of offshoring concerns that have been raised over the last few years, North American-based outsourcing locations have become increasingly popular due to a robust civil infrastructure, access to skilled resources, lower security risk, similar time zone access and comparable business culture. These onshore locations meet a variety of financial and business case objectives without the risk of what is referred to as the “hidden costs” of offshoring. Such costs include the additional investments that typically manifest themselves over the course of time, such as business continuity, disaster recovery and security. For example, your organization’s outsourcing strategy and business case needs to include the impact of rolling services back to internal resources during connectivity and environmental outages.

Download the white paper: " The Onshore Advantage: A Guide to Evaluating IT Outsourcing Options" at http://www.oaot.com

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Data Center Transformation and Consolidation

With a centralized and consolidated data center capability, organizations can reduce the cost of IT operations, provide organizational sustainability and serve the needs of an expanding virtual workforce. Below offers a strategy ensuring minimal impact to operations through every phase of the data center relocation and consolidation process, as follows:

Methodology – addresses critical inputs, outputs and system inter-dependencies Strategy – identifies stakeholders, success criteria and schedule milestones
Discovery – baselines interconnection points and common infrastructure resources
Design – employs industry best practices for a comprehensive and detailed plan
Planning – verifies the backup of all systems for a more systematic migration
Execution – completes action plans, operating procedures and testing to achieve project success


There is a white paper available at http://www.oaot.com