The Enemy Within

I have in my time had the displeasure to work in a couple of companies who have outsourced parts of their IT organisation (whether it be support, development). Whatever the relative merits of outsourcing, IMO, outsouring brings very few real benefits in the medium to long term. Obviously there is a percieved short term value proposition which leads companies down the outsourcing path in the first place (i.e. by reducing headcount) otherwise companies wouldn't do it.

As a result many IT people fear outsourcing, especially when cheaper offshoring is mixed into the equation. I used to be in this camp and a few years ago I believed that the best personal survival strategy against this trend was to move up the IT ladder into the 'talking' and 'thinking' space and distance myself from the 'doing' bit. I now don't have these worries.

Why? Well I recently had the opportunity to look at a large company that had outsourced almost its entire IT operation 5 years ago. The only elements not outsourced were the IT executive ('the talkers') and an enterprise architecture function ('the thinkers').

Their problem was that they had stopped delivering anything meaningful to the business. Why? Well there are a number of reasons but the one I wanted to focus on here is my belief that the outsourcer ('the doers') had effectively morphed into a fifth column working inside the IT shop. The resisted change at every opportunity and driven by the nature of the SLA's in place had redefined their role 'keeping the lights on'.

So did the business take this lying down. Of course not. It simply can't afford to. What it does is it effectively insources IT, usually covertly. Five years down the line they had more IT architects employed directly by the business than were left in central IT.