Robert Plant, a writer for the HBR is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.  His Six Rules for Finding the Right IT Vendor can be key to the success of your next outsourced IT project.  Like Robert, I’ve broken these rules a few times – sometimes painfully… (more…)

Recently I was reading an interesting article called Outsourcing: 10 Crippling Mistakes IT Departments Make and found myself scratching my head. At first, I was unsure why – all 10 things they point out are definitely key issues that can seriously harm or cripple your outsourcing plans.  All of their mistakes have a very common theme, that’s see all too often:  Companies don’t treat outsourcing like getting married.

When outsourcing, you’re building a long-term relationship with a company that will be looking after computer systems (or some subset of them), protecting your data, or helping your users.  When rereading the article with the mindset of getting married (or creating a partnership) instead of buying a commodity from a vendor, most people say to themselves, “Of course you wouldn’t do ‘Penny Wise, Pound Foolish’.”

For small to mid-sized businesses thinking about outsourcing, the requirements and “crippling mistakes” are quite different.  Most SMBs don’t have strong IT metrics (there’s some basics that everyone should have) or focus heavily on incentive-based contracts. Instead, there’s a need to focus on the basics.   (more…)

An email came across my inbox this morning from Tech Republic’s leadership forum.  Iilya’s article on hiring ideas is right on the money, but missing several key things for hiring. (more…)

We all make jokes at Microsoft’s expense.  I’m firmly a Microsoft person (in the technical world, not in the innovation world), and I’m no exception to that rule.  It’s great to hear Linus Torvalds, one of the creators of Linux accurately describe the hatred of Microsoft “a disease”.

Read the whole article here