Don Grisnell wrote:
>We are currently exploring the option of outsourcing our
>mainframe environment.
I know you asked for feedback offline, but I'd like to offer an important
bit of online feedback.
In my personal view, I do not think mainframe-only (or any
platform-specific) outsourcing is a good idea. Outsourcing can take many
forms, and outsourcing either "makes sense" or it doesn't. But I am hard
pressed to come up with an example of where outsourcing makes sense when
very artificially limited to a single platform.
Metaphorically speaking, would you outsource your lungs (only), or would
you outsource respiration? There is a difference. The former doesn't make
any sense to me. It just inevitably leads to lots of weird behaviors that
harm the business (or government mission), for a variety of reasons, mostly
related to the fact it's at least very hard to write a sensible contract
with that line of non-separation. The latter might make sense. Fetuses and
some surgical patients outsource respiration, for example.
If you've got a particular set of government functions or services you want
to outsource, end-to-end, maybe that makes sense. The mainframe-based
components within those functions or services, by themselves? No, that
probably doesn't make any sense whatsoever and would inevitably lead to bad
behaviors and perverse incentives. It's not a sensible way to cleave. It's
a very IT-centric view, and a contrived one at that. That's not the first
view I'd pick when assessing the value (or not) of outsourcing.
If you look at the successful examples of outsourcing I think you'll see
they are business/government service-oriented. To pick another analogy, I
don't think I've ever seen a rail system where the locomotive is outsourced
but the train cars continue to be run in-house, or vice versa. Where
there's rail outsourcing it's a franchise agreement of some kind, to carry
passengers along particular routes -- locomotives and passenger cars both
included. The rail underneath and its operations(*) might not be
outsourced, but one or more particular whole services are, with
identifiable, measurable, *external* outcomes.
To pick yet another example, building cleaning is often outsourced -- but
the whole service is outsourced, with a clear, measurable set of objectives
("clean buildings"). Would you ever outsource only mopping the floors but
keep sweeping, dusting, and wiping in-house? That'd be a predictable
disaster, wouldn't it?
I'm assuming a conventional definition of "outsourcing." There are some
other things that probably shouldn't be called outsourcing that some
organizations call outsourcing.
(*) This'd be analogous to outsourcing the data centers, i.e. "facilities
management" outsourcing. There are successful examples of outsourcing along
those lines since that's a reasonable place to divide responsibilities,
with the possibility of clear, measurable outcomes that can be contracted
fairly easily. Platform-specific separation of responsibilities? No, that
doesn't work -- or at least it's very, very hard to make work, especially
over the medium term or longer. Most if not all the application and
information system interactions -- the actual end-user services and
outcomes that you worry about -- aren't built and run that way. There is no
such separation at the service level.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy Sipples
IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA
E-Mail: [email protected]
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