IT Outsourcing in Contemporary Russia

The current state of IT and outsourcing industry in Russia is on the uprise. Just consider the following fact: the average rate of growth of Russia's economy is significantly lower than the rate of growth of IT.

The financial crisis, which occurred over two years ago, forced clients to reconsider their attitude to "the impossibility of outsourcing critical functions of IT". Most businesses took another look at the age-old practice of outsourcing and had to acknowledge that the last decade significantly changed the IT industry. The heads of IT departments stopped fearing losing company value by outsourcing some functions. Outsourcing has progressed to a level that would have been reached otherwise in three to five years, had the financial crisis not occurred.

The main difference between Russian and Western IT outsourcing remains in the absence of mutual trust between the outsourcer and the consumer in Russia. Furthermore, the success of the Western service provider is based on the high level of innovations and the originality of the service. Lately the most popular topics for discussion have been cloud technologies and rendering services according to principles SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service). These new approaches, on one hand, will bring a new wave of interest from a growing number of clients, and on the other — a wide range of offers from outsourcing companies. Without a doubt, there will be unique cases in working with each individual model, and every implementation would have to take into account all particular features of the client: specifics of the business, level of infrastructure and quality of personnel. But the commonality of all these cases will be the increase in mutual trust and responsibility of the outsourcing company for the result of the service project.

Today more than a half of clients feel that they must switch to the outsourcing model in the nearest future, and more than one-third already have some level of service agreements and are planning to expand them by implementing new types of services in software development, testing, and maintenance and support. Russia is wide open to all new opportunities in outsourcing.

Source: The Moscow Times

Read more...

Gartner Banks on Platform as a Service in 2011

According to the Gartner’s latest statement, 2011 will be the year of Platform as a Service (PaaS). Gartner believes that all leading enterprise software vendors will introduce or strongly expand their PaaS service offerings and cloud-enabled application infrastructure products.

"By the end of 2011, the battle for leadership in PaaS and the key PaaS segments will engulf the software industry," said Yefim Natis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

To make it plain, PaaS is a common reference to the layer of cloud technology architecture that contains all application infrastructure services, which are also known as "middleware" in other contexts. PaaS is the middle layer of the software stack "in the cloud". It is the technology that intermediates between the underlying system infrastructure (operating systems, networks, virtualization, storage, etc.) and overlaying application software.

Gartner also predicts that by 2015, most enterprises will have part of their run-the-business software functionally executing in the cloud, using PaaS services or technologies directly or indirectly.

Source: InformationWeek

Read more...

Gartner Reveals Technology Predictions for 2011

End of the year is as ever favorite time of most analyst firms for rolling out predictions, forecasts and all sorts of watch lists for the coming year. Especially of interest are those from most influential analyst powerhouses, like Gartner for example. Last week Gartner – the world's leading information technology research and advisory company –issued its “Top Technology Predictions” for IT organizations and users for 2011 and beyond. Let’s have a closer look at some of them which we find are worth sharing:

• Twenty Percent of Non-IT Global 500 Companies to Deliver through the Cloud. More and more – 20 percent – of non-IT companies in the Global 500 will continue to deliver products and services through the cloud, becoming de facto cloud computing companies by 2015. That means the role of IT decision making gets broader, and non-IT companies find themselves competing directly with IT service providers.

• IT Automation Results in Tangible Costs Savings through Man-hour Reductions. Self-service and automated provisioning associated with cloud delivery means productivity levels for service providers will increase—Gartner estimates a 25 percent reduction in IT labor hours by 2015.

• Consumerization of IT Transitions to “Postconsumerization”. Gartner predicts “postconsumerization” as one of the major trends for the upcoming years where instead of IT focusing on devices, apps and infrastructure, IT will shift to address info and peer-to-peer interaction. It is expected that ninety percent of companies will support corporate apps on personal devices like mobile, laptops and tablets, by 2014.

• Tablets Get Enterprise Support. iPad is just the first in a long future line of media tablets focused on “communications and consumption” of data instead of “creation” . As a result, 80 percent of enterprises will offer support for network connectivity, email, calendaring, and help desks by 2013 on tablets, says Gartner.

• National Infrastructure Hacked and Disrupted. By 2015, Gartner predicts at least one of the G20 nations will be the victim of dramatic online sabotage that will disrupt and damage critical infrastructure components. Whether it’s a stock exchange, physical nuclear plants or mobile-phone message routers, the analyst firm says attacks with lasting damage are only a matter of time.

Source: Channel Insider

Read more...

Tune up for Business Growth, Guru Says

The world’s trusted leader in IT research Gartner has recently given a reassuring outlook on the future of Information Technology business. The guru advisor doesn’t claim to predict dates for the economic recovery, but suggests that businesses already prepare their IT operations for the near upturn.

Despite that all of the leading economies (including US and UK) report recession and are cautious of any optimistic comments, Gartner analyzed the real market situation and revealed that many organizations are already working at near- or full-capacity levels. The research firm thus advises that IT enterprises should as early as possible prepare their business for an increased demand of IT services to be all fit and ready when the economy stabilizes.

“Waiting until that new demand arrives will be far too late to appropriately meet it, and we are recommending that companies start preparing for business growth now with a view to having these plans completed by July 1, 2009," noted Gartner analyst Ken McGee. "Having a completed plan will enable the near-immediate allocation of funding and staffing for IT projects, thus avoiding the need to take weeks to devise a plan after senior executives mandate the need to support business growth initiatives."

Not trying to speculate on the prompt end of recession, the analyst firm none-the-less advises that software vendors should not wait for an 'official' declaration, and shrewdly gear up for better times in advance to catch the fattest worm.

Source: InformationWeek

Read more...