Can Cloud make the breakthrough? There is so much talked about the pros and cons of outsourcing – whether this is being used for manual mundane tasks, like Insurance Claims Processing or the traditional Asset Take Over - Lease Back model that was the vogue a few years ago – (this spectacularly failed for Sainsbury's when Darren Shapland's first job as FD was to sign a cheque to Accenture for £30 million to get his IT and IP back!). FDs, COOs and CEOs have done the hockey cockey outsource dance for many years with little long term success.

In a new world where Cloud Services are on the rise – is this the opportunity the FDs, COOs and CEOs around the world have been waiting for? Perhaps yes!

The term "Flex-Sourcing" was used by the American hosting companies. The idea was that IT functions could be tactically outsourced to them (web hosting as a prime example) and "flexed" back when needed. This was a great idea except this usually meant that the customer actually paid penalty clauses when trying to "flex back"  because they were contractually tied to the hoster (mainly due to the large capital spend the hoster had gone through to build infrastructure in the first place). Not much flex there then for our beloved FDs!

So we are faced with FDs wanting to drive down bottom line costs, but feeling very reluctant to get trapped by outsourcing again.

Cloud Services Providers may really help here. If they partner with the right organisations that specialise in Service Desk and Automation Fault Finding, this consortium approach de-constructs the traditional ITO. This also doesn't alienate the IT Director as he gets to do the things he wants to do to improve the business through IT transformation. He can leverage the cloud provider to deliver as and when, knowing that the Service Desk is covered...his sleepless nights of the pager going off (sorry old school) are avoided.

So – my TLA to add to the many ones that end in "O" for Outsource is CBO...Cloud Based Outsourcing...wonder whether Gartner will pick up on that one, if they do I thought of it first !

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