That’s a snippet of what Gartner analyst, Helen Huntley, verbally delivered at their annual outsourcing summit in London.
I couldn’t agree more with many of the points laid out in this article:
Ten developments that will transform IT outsourcing – 9/29/2011 …
The main ponts from their 10 I feel will strongly reshape the way (smart) businesses are structured are:
Globalisation
I’ve had the experience of hiring workers from almost all continents
with connected internet. None are 100% better or worse than their
overseas competition, it’s more about finding competent, motivated
workers. For this, I use testing methods covered in other blog posts,
resulting in the right candidate from “wherever”. As they set the price
they are willing to work for, as long as they are competent workers, I’m
happy, they’re happy, everyone wins.
“They took err jobs!” <- I’ve always believed there are enough
jobs for people willing to work in the developed world of USA, Aus, UK,
etc. I’m just as happy to give a programming job to a USA worker as I am
to give it to an Indonesian. There is a rough global industry rate I
think, for certain skill levels, with workers in developed countries
definitely able to work for the same prices as richer economies. I do
feel better though, knowing that when I do hire a developing nation
worker, their salary will go a lot further to supporting his/her family.
If anything can help balance the inequalities in countries like the
Philippines and Indonesia (those that I have at least some knowledge
about), I think it’s going to be international outsourcing.
SaaS / Cloud computing / Magic services
Within the next five years enterprise spending on
industrialised services such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) and
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will reach $122bn.
And why wouldn’t they? As Box.net just got 10′s of millions of investment from Salesforce.com
to secure their places as awesome online services, installing an open
source but pain in the ass piece of software on a web server you must
maintain yourself is seeming as outdated as carrying around a laptop
with an optical drive!
Externalisation
This is my biggest turn on at the moment. Gone are the days of
wanting to be the geek in the office, creating elaborate systems which
only I would be able to maintain – thus being loved/feared/loathed by
other employees. The title of this post is where I believe it’s at now. I
usually explain it to small businesses as follows:
You may have a budget for one IT staff, how is he/she going to stay
up to date on the latest technologies for maintaining your website,
while simultaneously being an expert at internet and network security,
write custom backup scripts and deal with the manager and other
employee’s every nagging computer issue? You don’t have to! Hire a
consultant or if you are hiring one full time IT staff, hire them as a
CIO to connect you with all the right external SaaS/cloud apps so you
are not dependent on them should they one day freak out and disappear as
many an IT worker are prone to do!
Take something like Salesforce.com or Shopify.com
or any other SaaS starting with an ‘S’ – they have TEAMS of security
experts who can focus on their area of expertise, with the cost being
absorbed by the thousands of companies subscribed to their service.
While I’ve worked in positions where I was the web programmer, server
admin and IT guy all at once, I much preferred roles where I could
focus on a core skill set and be an expert. In my experience so far with
hiring global freelancers, I find that the future will breed more
specialists and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
One thing which I think is currently lacking and will start to grow
exponentially, is the job role for outsourcing managers. This may fall
under other names, such as project manager, CTO, CIO, etc, but for the
SME market, someone who has the technical expertise COMBINED with the
ability to liaise with both the upper management and easily aggravated
IT workers, is going to be in increasing demand. Although, my guess is
that with the limited supply of such people and increasing demand, we’ll
see more IT consulting firms starting up, sending out client relations
staff to multiple client offices and bringing the work back to the hive
for distribution to a global network of worker bees.
