Research & Insight

Function

IT Infrastructure & Applications

The Flexi-pricing Route to Cloud Innovation

Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer

I’ve got a little story about cloud solutions. 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 F&A Forecast: 14 Challenges and Six Solutions

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 …

The Pros and Cons of Single and Multiple IT Providers: Competitive Tension versus Accountability

Frank Usher, Managing Consultant

When considering sourcing alternatives for IT services, buyers must make a fundamental decision on structure. Do you want a single IT provider or multiple IT providers? Both have their pros and cons. Neither of the approaches is wrong. But each presents unique challenges, both in operations and in provider management. When IT outsourcing initially evolved, …

Analytics-as-a-Service: Shaping The Next Big Future IT Infrastructure Trend

Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer

The next big IT infrastructure trend is here: Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS). 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 by Time magazine. Rosling has shown the history of 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 data …

Fabric Data Centers: The End of Complex, Expensive and Inefficient Infrastructure

Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer

What’s new in the data center? Last year, the buzz was around “fabric data centers” as organizations began to worry about costs. Did it make sense to have dedicated and expensive network, computing and storage resources around applications even if the IT infrastructure was outsourced? Could IT infrastructure costs be brought down? CIOs were under …

What is Outsourcing? It’s Our Past, Present and Future

Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer

What is outsourcing? It is not a new or alien phenomenon. Almost every organization outsources some aspect of its business. A paint company may outsource the manufacture of its paint cans; a mobile network may outsource its billing activity; a hospital may outsource medical waste disposal; an auto manufacturer may outsource servicing; and an IT …

The Next Generation Shared Services through BPO

Dennis Winkler, Director, Jim Matthews, Managing Consultant, Alsbridge

Executives are all asking similar questions of their shared service organizations (SSO): “How do I get to the next level of shared services and realize more value?” “How do I change my SSO model to expand services and go global?” “How do I drive continuous process improvement initiatives?” “How do I deal with social media …

Outsourcing Enterprise’s BYOD Adoption to Improve Chances of Success

Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer

Are you at work? Check the mobile phone you are using. If you are in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, chances are your company has allowed you to bring your own smart phone to work. The results of a recent survey of the region released by Aruba Networks (NASDAQ: ARUN) suggests that …

Financial Services: Build those mobile apps before customers dial out

Outsourcing Center, Karthik Nagendra, Business Writer

Innovation unfolding by way of mobile application usage in the financial sector is not totally unexpected: an increasing number of customers are walking around with smart phones, transacting in virtual worlds, accessing information 24X7, changing market dynamics and providing unlimited opportunities. Time has literally begun to translate into money. ComScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) [i] reported earlier …

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