Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Businesses have always wanted a crystal ball to predict the future. Now they can almost have one if they combine Big Data, analytic prowess and deep domain and process knowledge. For the first time, analytics is becoming predictive and can help executives make less risky decisions that affect their corporate futures. The key is you …
Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer
Everyone loves hybrid models. Who doesn’t want the best of both worlds? IT organizations everywhere crave “a little bit of this and a little bit of that” approach to spread their risk. They want to keep control over infrastructure, business critical apps, data and processes that help preserve IP or enable a competitive edge while …
Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer
In late September, high-profile cloud storage start up Nirvanix told its customers to stop replicating data on its servers and migrate to other providers like Microsoft Azure, IBM SoftLayer and Amazon S3. For several reasons, Nirvanix, sitting on a tidy $70 million in funding, was shutting down . Users had until October 15 to download …
Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer
The IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) model began as a way of provisioning IT services, infrastructure and support for businesses that did not really understand how to create or run IT services. The ITaaS model does this at scale in a cost-effective and predictable manner. Put another way, ITaaS is a pay-as-you-go model aimed at SMBs who want …
Outsourcing Center, Patti Putnicki, Business Writer
It’s hard to find a business enabler that’s evolving as quickly as Big Data analytics. This undisputed darling of the loyalty program and retail world has now infiltrated nearly every industry, from transportation and healthcare to insurance and supply chain management. It’s the catalyst for a new marketing mindset, where targeted offers are not only …
Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer
A wealthy looking woman entered an optician’s shop, pointed to a very stylish frame and declared to the shopkeeper, “I’d like to buy that. How much?” Gauging at a glance her capacity to pay, he replied: “$500.” When she didn’t bat an eyelid, he added quickly, “for the frame.” “And the glass?” she asked haughtily. …
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Five years ago the big industry buzz was about analytics. The excitement it generated at the time matched the arrival of another hot new technology: the first iPhone (June 27, 2007 in case you forgot!) Did the reality match the hype? (Analytics not iPhone.) Today an analytics component has become table stakes in most outsourcing pursuits, …
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
The finance and accounting function, along with HR, have traditionally been the BPO processes that companies testing the waters of outsourcing get wet with first. Today “transactional outsourcing has been leveled to a simple commodity,” says Michael J. Alfonsi, Managing Director, BancTec Financial Transaction Services. So what are FAO’s challenges 20 years later? Processes are …
Outsourcing Center, Patti Putnicki, Business Writer
If you look back on the transforming world of IT over the past few years, it’s easy to chart the stages. First, there was denial that anything needed to change. Then came the fear of cloud and the perceived lack of control associated with this agile, new delivery model. As we move to 2013, we …
Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer
We’ve seen how data can deliver insights in the hands of people like Hans Rosling who has been listed amongst the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 by Time magazine. Rosling has shown the history of 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 data points. He presents data with the urgency of …
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