Outsourcing is a process where an organisation sub-contracts certain functions or processes within a business to a specialist, third-party Company.
These activities are something that we often do in our daily lives. For example, many people have gardeners or cleaners simply because they do not have the time or inclination to clean their house or mow the lawn. In fact from a business perspective you’ll rarely see a member of staff cleaning the office at the end of the day, it is nearly always contracted out to a specialist company.
IT outsourcing can be used by most companies and, in fact, many outsource some key IT services without actually realising it. For example, many companies outsource their IT support function such as software support and hardware maintenance. It is very rare, especially for small to medium size companies, to retain these support services in-house simply because employing specialist personnel who may only ever be called upon occasionally, is not cost effective. This means that the company have the expertise of a professional but not the overhead or cost of a full-time person.
IT outsourcing is also sometimes known as ‘managed services’. This is a very similar system where generally, non strategic IT functions are subcontracted to a specialist third party organisation.
The outsourcing provider may not necessarily provide all of the services required directly as they may not have the relevant resources or expertise. Quite often certain services are sub-contracted to specialist companies, leaving the original provider to manage those relationships.
There are very few vendors who have a reseller channel that focuses on Outsourced IT solutions although one of the most notable is The Risk Group whose channel provides Backup, Exchange and IT Support services. Organisations like Zensar, an Indian offshore company provide very cost effective services but it’s the local reseller community, those ‘trusted advisors’ like Ramsac and Riven Associates that provide the peace of mind service that end customers require.