How Outsourcing Will Change in 2016

Technology outsourcing has changed dramatically in the past few years, but what are the key changes ahead in 2016? A new report in CIO magazine lists their view on the ten key trends to watch for. In my view, from those ten, these three are really worth your attention:

1. Cloud and as-a-service infrastructure; services are being built in a far more flexible way allowing software and infrastructure to all be located in the cloud and to scale up or down as required. Companies only pay for the systems and software they use today, not licenses for software that needs to be installed or rooms full of servers.

2. Vendors get more flexible; contract times are getting shorter and payment schedules are changing, but this is mostly because the idea of the client and supplier is changing. IT experts are becoming true partners, becoming a part of the team and contracts are starting to reflect this change in the relationship.

3. Automation; a lot of what we considered to be processes that needed to be performed by humans can be learned by robots now. Robotic Process Automation will allow robots (can be just software rather than physical robots) to learn processes and repeat them, then to learn with experience.

Despite all these suggestions from CIO magazine, one of the most critical changes is the way that IT services are purchased. With more systems available as a service or via apps there is a greater disconnect between the CIO and the business managers. Many IT projects can be commissioned directly by the business team without any need to interact with the CIO of a company. That’s a big change as the CIO used to retain control over all technology systems.

What outsourcing trends do you think will be really important this year?