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University of Canberra outsourced and offshored its entire IT department to India-based Wipro, claiming they will save $5 million annually. Interesting to see if this pans out as they predict or what the services will be like. Maybe the faculty and staff will just go underground with their IT needs, so the true cost will be buried in vague “office supply” or “research supplies” budget lines.
Louis Gerstner in “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance” argues that you need a crisis to create true cultural change. I attended a NITLE seminar on cloud computing and two CIOs discussed their move to Google Apps–email specifically. In both cases, their current email systems were collapsing and everyone was unhappy. So, the move to Google went quickly and smoothly. I wonder what our crisis will be? Economy, anyone?
We’ve started a big service cost project. I’m looking at all the services we provide and am trying to ballpark the costs of them. As the bean counter and I travel from office to office to gather data, folks are starting to look more and more stressed. All I can do to help alleviate the fear (a composite of outsourcing fears, economic stresses, organizational stability, etc.) is talk about what, how, and why of this project and solicit feedback. But, in the end, some people may not be able to grow and so will have to go. We shall see.
I … Continue Reading
I was reviewing the upcoming budget extravaganza and some staffing challenges with my boss when I asked her if she had consulted with Sungard about outsourcing the entire IT operation as part of the decision base when they created the CTO position. “What are you talking about?” she said. “You know,” I said, “Sunguard–they’ll come in and take it all over so that, if this were to happen here, I would suddenly be working for them.” “Really?” she said. “Yes,” I said, “I think it might be most useful in organizations where technology is not viewed particularly strategically…” Her eyes … Continue Reading
This presentation by Adrian Sannier (UTO at ASU) will cost you about 72 minutes of your life. But it’s worth it if you’re interested in what the future holds for us IT’ers in higher ed. I’m considering showing it to all the IT staff at our next staff meeting and to the dreaded advisory group too. I think Sannier’s right on the money with where we should be going and what we should be doing. The question is: how much do we let our culture and internal politics affect these ideas, our plans, and doing … Continue Reading
Either way, you’re OUTTA here, Jack! Nah, I’m just kidding. Except, well, maybe not. Today I met with an alternative help desk provider. Like alternative medicine. Here’s what they will do: everything the current help desk does, but better and for less money. During the vendor presentation, one of the slides showed their current customer list. Of the 15 or so current customers, at least half of them had CTOs/CIOs who’d been in place for less than three years. So, maybe this is “low hanging fruit” for some of us?
Kyle, is this where you reply with, “help … Continue Reading