WiredScribe: The Business of IT

Much has been written about the numerous benefits and ills of outsourcing. Nonetheless, it is now a business imperative for most companies, underpinning the need to ensure a successful outsourcing relationship. Being a strategic decision with long term impact, the success of outsourcing depends both on the service provider and the outsourcer’s commitment. An analysis of outsourcing relationships that have not been successful reveals a certain pattern. Based on our extensive experience in outsourcing engagements we have identified the eight most common but serious mistakes enterprises are likely to commit while outsourcing their processes to a third party service provider. This paper analyzes each mistake in detail and outlines measures to avoid these pitfalls. The following illustration highlights these eight common mistakes.   Poor Governance This is one of the most commonly encountered problems and a ke...

Movies these days have brighter colours, mind-boggling stunts and more; even the glitches seem to have disappeared. And it’s all thanks to the use of multimedia and animation. A peek into how this technology has made movie-watching more interesting. The tension in the air is palpable as Bollywood heartthrob Aamir Khan races on the tracks towards the speeding train, in the movie Ghulam. The train is just seconds away from hitting our daredevil hero when he jumps off the tracks, missing being hit by mere inches. No, it was not a stunt artist. And contrary to popular belief, neither was it Khan himself. The scene was shot with Aamir Khan running against a static wall, which was later fused with the shot of a running train, resulting in the nail-biting action sequence that was shown on screen. The collective gasp of the audience resounds throughout the theatre as Rani Mukherjee is hit by a speeding car and goes flying into the midst of oncoming vehicles.   A shot th...

During the course of conversations with several distributors, one point that was reiterated was the need to build an exclusive channel network—a set of channel partners in different regions who would be faithful only to one particular disty. This, according to the disties 360 Magazine spoke to, would resolve the issue of low margins while ensuring the disty of a much more aggressive and dedicated channel. Even the partner stands to benefit from additional; support and greater margins. But while this may seem to be the ideal solution to a nagging problem it is easier said than done. Customers demand an array of option each time they are out shopping. If a partner doesn’t house the particular brand demanded by a customer then he is bound to lose that business. However, channel partners that do not directly deal with end customers stand to benefit from entering into exclusive relationships with a disty. And here we explore those mutual benefits. Today, disties are dedicatedly e...

Photography consumption in India has been on the rise over the past two years. According to market studies, the Indian photography market had grown at a CAGR of approximately 12 percent over the past few years. According to market analysts, the growth rate could touch 15 percent before the end of this year. Traditional photography itself is expected to continue growing at the rate of over 8.3 percent. According to the same report, India consumes close to 90 million film rolls a year. But the overall cost of photography has kept many users away from analogue cameras. Digital photography, on the other hand, comes with the promise of zero clicking costs. The Indian Digital Still Camera Market witnessed an explosive growth of 114 percent in unit terms during 2004. According to IDC, the Indian digital still camera market notched up revenues of Rs 366 crore during 2005. Each year, camera manufacturers have been introducing increasingly sophisticated, high performance digital cam...

Runbook Automation systems empower organizations to design, build, orchestrate, manage, and report on workflows that support IT processes. Run Book Automation is not limited by IT infrastructure elements and acts as the connecting layer between disparate IT processes and user-friendly service desk tools. With Run Book, enterprise users can automate routine, repetitive operational processes, drive down costs, and remove complexity from the datacenter. The solution introduces greater accountability into the system, and furnishes organizations with tools to measure productivity and improvements in efficiency. 1.0 RBA is the Next IT Battleground A study of past trends reveal that in the early nineties, businesses were more concerned about the management framework they needed to adopt in order to effectively and efficiently manage their IT infrastructure. While this need was effectively met by packaged solutions like CA Unicenter, IBM Tivoli and HP OpenView, today, the focus is...