Dear {!firstname},

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We have much to be grateful for. Thank you to our clients, colleagues, partners and friends!

We've seen some pretty bad outsourcing situations, and have experienced scenarios where it makes a lot of sense. How do you know? Read on for our discussion of four types of IT outsourcing, along with downside risks and upsides.

I enjoyed speaking on cloud computing in Columbus, Ohio - it was a wonderful group! As a follow up, we briefly discuss one of the most common questions - is cloud secure?

Sincerely,

Laura Pettit Rusick
OPT Solutions, Inc.
www.optsolutionsinc.com

Have you thought about outsourcing some or all of your IT department? Already are? Maybe these sound familiar:

• Your organization is hesitant to hire.
• You have struggled with finding the balance between in-house IT staff and outsourced help.
• You would you rather not have to deal with having IT employees.
• You wish you had a second opinion when it comes to IT.

There are four main categories of IT outsourcing:

1. Supplemental outsourcing, or staff augmentation. When large or unique projects come up, the organization brings in contractors to assist. The contractors may act as a temporary staffing increase. They may have specific skill sets that are not regularly needed, so bringing someone on temporarily makes sense rather than having an employee who doesn’t have enough to do. No one can afford that these days.
• Downsides? That great person you used a year ago is probably on a new project and not available for weeks or months. For some systems (e.g. phone system, website updates, financial application support), you may need more priority than this option allows.
• You will pay a premium for expertise you use occasionally. The contractor’s rate takes into consideration he is not billing 52 weeks a year.
• The upside is all about flexible resources.
2. Outsourcing of IT functions. The most frequent type is managed services, where a vendor takes responsibility for some combination of servers and networks. They may... READ ON - IT Outsourcing - continued>>>

Copyright © 2011 by Laura Pettit Rusick.

Question: Is cloud computing secure?

This is a tough question to answer in a few paragraphs. Cloud computing vendors vary widely. Some store data in the U.S., some internationally. Some are newer and some have long, experienced track records.

Business requirements vary as well. Do you have legal or compliance-related requirements to keep your data in the U.S.? Does the vendor have redundancy built into their systems to meet your up-time needs? What standards do they meet?

Perhaps an even better question relates to comparisons. Many organizations struggle with past due security updates, insecure networks and untested, unsecured backups. In those situations, a good cloud solution is likely to be less risky from a security and business standpoint.

Security is not black and white - it is risk-based and should be evaluated for each organization.

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