A staggering 90% of companies will outsource some part of their IT by the year 2001, according to new research from IBM. Speaking at a press conference in London yesterday, Gerard Jousset, general manager, IBM Global Services West, said the European market for outsourcing generated $2bn revenue in 1997, and this figure is expected to increase by 25% over the next three years. The company, whose services arm generates 25% of the corporation’s revenue, used the conference to announce a new set of outsourcing services designed to sit alongside its existing strategic outsourcing arm aimed at large corporates. The first service, called Out Tasking, includes a portfolio of products designed to enable any company; typically those that don’t want to outsource their entire network, to ‘mix and match’ services to meet their needs. Asset management provides inventory tracking and management, via the internet, for 1,000 to 10,000 users. Under high availability services, the company offers remote, multivendor LAN and WAN problem identification and resolution. Performance management and capacity planning services allows users to test the impact of change on their IT systems, networks and applications. Jousset said this latter product was typically aimed at those companies installing new applications to be accessed over the internet; modifying an old one, for example, to make it millennium compliant, or going through a transformation, such as a merger or acquisition. IBM said its second new group, Selective Outsourcing, is designed to provide specific skills to small and medium companies who need to implement a new technology, or service, very quickly and who don’t have the time or resources to do it themselves. They will be pre-packaged, low-cost solutions, Jousset added, Nothing like the custom- tailored, personalized service we offer to our larger customers. Selective outsourcing is designed for quick roll out and the products will be replicable anywhere. The first is called Midrange Express. To be launched in the second half of 1998, it is a fixed-price, packaged service available on the AS/400. Jousset, who did not provide any more details on the product, said it would be rolled out on Unix and NT platforms later. Jousset said that companies were increasingly looking to outsource as a way of gaining competitive advantage in an increasingly skills-starved market. He advised companies implementing new technologies to get the products in, as quickly as possible. If it’s going to take you 3 to 4 years, then forget it, your competitors will have beaten you to it. The company also launched a new set of products aimed at helping companies to conduct business and electronic commerce over the internet. The announcements included IBM’s HomePage Creator: a way of creating a web site over which a company can conduct secure transactions, IBM Vault registry: a digital certificate software tool and new, web/Java-enabled versions of its customer service and call-center solutions.
