IBA Group
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

Back when the global economic crisis started, many industry commentators declared that this would be a boost for the international IT outsourcing market. With companies in Europe and the US struggling to ride out the downturn, there would be strong growth in offshore outsourcing.

But things never really played out like that. Outsourcing usually needs a big upfront investment in training, knowledge transfer, and additional management to make the transition run smoothly. Many companies just decided to avoid that short-term investment even if it was clear that there would be benefits in the long-term.

We are not out of the woods yet, but there is more stability. The US is growing slowly now and many countries in Europe are seeing promising growth – though the uncertainty of the Euro is still causing many to fear for the immediate future of the Mediterranean economy.

Research and consulting company, Everest Group, in a recently published research suggested that outsourcing in Europe was worth €180-200bn in 2010. Their latest research for 2011 is not published yet, but estimates suggest that this figure will have increased to about €220bn. This is about a 10 per cent increase in demand even in quite an uncertain economic climate.

Industry observers suggest that much of this new demand is because companies in France and Germany are starting to explore a more global delivery model. In the past they were far more resistant to offshoring, but today it has become a strategic necessity, regardless of the global economic situation it is just how technology is delivered today.

All this is good news for those of us who have been delivering remotely all along, right through the economic crisis. Whether companies are exploring offshore outsourcing because they need to reduce their cost, or they just need to find more expertise and faster, we know exactly how to help.

IBA Group
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

The IBM Tivoli Management Framework (known as the TMF) is a systems management platform from IBM. It was originally a separate company and product, but IBM purchased Tivoli in the nineties and the product has been developed extensively since then within IBM’s software division.

The TMF is designed using a CORBA-based architecture and its real strength is that it can be used to manage a large number of remote devices in a very robust way.

Tivoli is an entire framework of tools that can be linked, rather than just a single software product, so it is very powerful and can be used in many ways. There are endless different ways in which the tools can be integrated to deliver a solution.

At IBA, we recently delivered a solution to a client that involved us connecting these tools together to create a fully integrated system:

• Tivoli Network Manager; the tool to help visualize and manage a complete network.
• Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus; the tool that provides a complete operations management infrastructure, including the ability to identify and correct critical network issues.
• Tivoli Netcool Impact; an intelligence tool that adds context to events, helping you to manage events on the network and using intelligence to determine whether an event is critical or not.

Even this short example alone gives you an idea of the power of Tivoli. It is not just about visualizing your network with a series of graphical representations, but about adding a layer of intelligence into the network itself – almost like a self-healing network so your team only needs to manage the critical issues.

To those not involved in managing networks all this might seem quite dull, but every company needs their network to be up and running and as reliable as possible, business doesn’t happen without it, so the team keeping the network running are really ‘keeping the lights on’ at your business. Do they have the right tools for the job?

On March 1, IT Europa announced the winners of the European Software Excellence Awards 2012 in Berlin, Germany. IBA was selected the winner in the category Database Solution.

IBA Group entered the contest for the fourth time and won for the second year in a row. In 2011, the award was in the Relationship Management category.

We were pleased to be in the same company with world IT leaders. The recepients of awards in other categories were Oracle, Fujitsu, and other reputable companies.

See a video clip of the award presentation at http://youtu.be/gUrbwI5IcRQ
See winner list

From February 17 to February 18, 2011 Karim Pedersen, Technical Editor of the Danish IT newspaper ComOn, visited IBA Minsk.

Karim was in Belarus for the first time in 2006. The visit resulted in a series of articles, including IT Giant in Belarus. This year, he came again to see what has changed and what is going on.

Karim concludes: ”The big lesson from my visit here is that we are very much the same and we are very much alike. We have the same dreams, we have the same aspirations and working hard is the way to get to that future”.

Karim shares his impressions in the video clip below:  

View also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sviFA6i1Irc

We look forward to a new series of articles about Belarus by Karim and to his future visits to IBA.

About Karim Pedersen

Karim Pedersen is the founder of the largest IT news website in Denmark, ComON.dk, writing about technology and telecommunications for readers in Denmark. Founded 14 years ago, ComON has grown through a range of partnerships with other Danish news media, and today the articles are syndicated to a number of other media, reaching a broad segment of the Danish population. ComON has also for four years published a print newspaper for IT managers and is closely linked with other properties at the publishing house, Mediaprovider, such as the monthly gadget magazine Gear and the photography magazine Zoom. Before starting ComON, Karim has published more than 30 books on IT in Danish and worked freelance as a software developer and web designer. Karim has travelled extensively, both in his professional and private life. Writing about IT outsourcing and globalization for ComON, he visited India, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Belarus, and Russia.

On February 11, 2011 IT Europa, a leading European IT publisher and market intelligence organization, announced the winners of the European IT Excellence Awards 2011 – the pan-European awards event for IT and Telecoms channels. The winners and finalists were honoured at a celebration dinner at The London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, London.

IBA Group became the winner in the category Relationship Management. Alexander Derkach, IBA Group representative, collected the prize.

See video:

See pictures also at http://www.iteawards.com/

IBA Group

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

This blog usually explores opportunities in Eastern Europe, but given that it is the first month of 2011, it’s worth exploring some of the key trends taking place in the most mature European outsourcing market – the United Kingdom.

Outsourcing advisory firm Equaterra just published their key trends for the UK market in 2011, based on examining 650 outsourcing contracts with over 200 companies, worth around £14 billion. Given that so many UK contracts have been examined, it was possible for the Equaterra researchers to draw some conclusions about how Western European customers are behaving, and what they will want in 2011.

Trend 1: Economic conditions are still tough, forcing companies to consider more offshore outsourcing. Eighty-seven per cent of companies will continue offshoring at present or higher levels, but sixty-one per cent will increase offshoring.

Trend 2: Cost reduction continues to be the key driver for offshoring, but financial flexibility is becoming far more important – up fifteen per cent on the previous year.

Trend 3: Global sourcing of services is far more accepted – with over seventy-five per cent of all companies using outsourcing applying some kind of offshore delivery model.

Trend 4: Multisourcing is increasing – with large-scale single-supplier contracts usually linked to low satisfaction with the contract.

Lee Ayling, EquaTerra’s Managing Director, IT Advisory UK, commented: “As in previous years, the 2010 study provides deep insights into the changing dynamics of the UK outsourcing market. One of the many points of note is that outsourcing contracts which deliver cost savings alone do not lead to higher client satisfaction. But successfully delivering cost savings plus another driver, such as access to skills or time to market, does positively impact general satisfaction – highlighting that both end users and service providers should not focus on price alone before and during an outsourcing relationship.”

For the European supplier community, the message is clear, cost remains important, but flexibility is the key. If outsourcing can create more flexible service levels and improve cash flow through more flexible financial models then it will be regarded a success.