The End of Traditional IT Outsourcing: How It Impacts Customers

The traditional IT outsourcing industry will be dead in five years, A.T. Kearney's Arjun Sethi predicted in a recent interview with CIO.com. The culprit? Cloud computing services. Sethi's vision of the future of the IT services industry is quite clear, but he's unsure of the specific implications this industry transformation poses to traditional IT outsourcing customers.


To determine the buy-side effects of "the end of IT outsourcing as we know it," CIO.com talked to Kevin Campbell, group chief executive of technology for Accenture and former head of its outsourcing group. According to Campbell, the cloud-based future state holds great promise for outsourcing customers in all sectors—seamless customer connections for retailers, electronic health records that follow you everywhere, low-cost government-provided IT services—if only IT departments can meet the not insignificant challenge of integrating services in the new "cloud-sourced" environment.

Kevin Campbell: The cloud is still emerging and all its related implications haven't been thought through. Organizations are still trying to understand what the cloud is. There is much discussion about how the cloud will affect sourcing, and while there are plenty of schools [of thought], all outsourcers are looking at what their role in the cloud might be, how it will change their relationship with customers and what opportunities it will present.

In your opinion, will the market rapidly develop cloud services capable of displacing traditional outsourcing? 
 
It's already happening. The question is about delivering services at scale. Everyone we're talking to has cloud as part of their IT strategy, and many organizations are already piloting solutions and thinking about next steps. We expect the cloud to have a significant effect on the market within the next three to five years.

Who are the true early adopters—those already using cloud services for mission-critical applications or infrastructure? 

We're not seeing Global 2000 companies running their financial or ERP systems in the cloud. This doesn't mean that what's out there in terms of cloud services isn't important. But for critical applications—applications that can't go down—it's about having the ability to work around system outage issues.
We are seeing especially strong interest in the pharmaceutical, financial services, high-tech and telecommunications sectors, and demand for the entire cloud services lifecycle across all our geographies.


What are the risks of early cloud adoption? 

The risk most often discussed is security. The bad guys keep getting more sophisticated and creative. The potential exposures and the implications to the rest of the infrastructure are also becoming better understood.
However, many of the innovators in the cloud space are not accustomed to dealing with enterprise [needs]. They either come from the commercial world or start-up worlds, and they don't have a strong understanding of enterprise requirements such as service levels or uptime demands. But the market's understanding of the enterprise will mature over time.

Cost reduction and capital outlay avoidance are driving cloud adoption. Are customers of cloud computing services reaping those benefits yet? 

Accenture defines cloud services as those that cost at least 40 percent less than current services, have minimal up-front costs, are paid for as you use them, and are ready when you need them.
There are a lot of cloud-like solutions and things with cloud-like characteristics in the market. In fact, outsourcers have worked for years to try to provide utility-like services. But the real key is delivering one-to-many usage and a standardized approach. If you can deliver that, clients are realizing significant benefits.

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http://www.cio.com/article/615763/The_End_of_Traditional_IT_Outsourcing_How_It_Impacts_Customers?source=rss_cloud_computing


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