To outsource or not?

摘要

As computer technology has advanced, companies have seen the need for more consumption of information and rapid systems development. Traditional systems organizations in corporations do not lend themselves well to this need. Data processing departments and their systems are a legacy of an era where computers served as accelerators of back office operations. However, the significant effort and capital that companies have invested in developing and maintaining old systems and their attendant support organizations make scrapping the data processing department and starting from scratch impractical and unrealistic. Instead, companies have approached outsourcing as an interim solution. Outsourcing applications is the subject dealt with here. How do managers tell what projects are likely candidates for outsourcing and which should be kept in-house? A set of criteria for managers to make these decisions is given and examples of such outsourcing are discussed.