Transcript Outsourcing IT Services Michigan`s Perspective

Outsourcing IT Services
Michigan’s Perspective
CSG Conference
May 12, 2000
Alan McCord
University of Michigan
EDUCAUSE Presentation
• For PowerPoint slides:
http://www.umich.edu/~amccord/outsourcing.pdf
• For bibliography and student notes:
[email protected]
General Thoughts
• Accept that we are part of an IT commodity
marketplace
• Approach outsourcing as “just another tool”
• Need to retain control over your IT planning
agenda
• Cannot abrogate responsibility for
outsourcing contract administration
General Thoughts
• Managing contracts is significantly different
than managing staff and resources
• Outsourcing changes the "language" of
service provision from resources to dollars
• Outsourcing generally removes the practice
of “providing services on the margin”
• Need to retain enough technical expertise to
evaluate options and plan effectively
Barriers to Outsourcing in
Higher Education (Griffiths)
• Mission conflict
– universities - service, employees, open systems
– private provider - profits, closed systems
• Politics
– public responsibility
– anathema to private business model
– commitment to use student employees
Barriers to Outsourcing in
Higher Education (Griffiths)
• Legal and purchasing requirements
– competitive bidding
– commitment to regional providers
– long-term contracts vs. market volatility
• Size and decentralization
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existing economies of scale
difficult to cost current IT environment
various broken funding and chargeback systems
various service packages and levels
Michigan’s Posture on
Outsourcing
• Understand aggregate and unit costs
– voice, data backbone, administrative processing
• Tease apart IT budgets
– base operations, growth, strategic
• Engage execs to identify strategic initiatives
• Benchmark and bid
– identify efficiencies and metrics
– start with commodity services after costs are fully
understood
Examples of Commodity
Services
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Data centers (ITD, MCIT, Engineering)
Voice services (VoIP is wild card)
Network installation services (unionized)
Billing services (multiple recharge centers)
E-mail services
Personal web space
Computing sales
Desktop support
Examples of Strategic Services
• Converged networking
– working on strategy
• Middleware and directory services
– too immature for commodity services
• Instructional delivery
– balance between toolset and “real IP” issues
• Video services and broadcasting
– providers fragmented, demand not significant