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Outsourcing of Applications

Think Tank 75 minutes

Issues and Solutions for Outsourcing

Yvonne Wilson

Christopher Ferris

The outsourcing of application operations to an application service provider is attractive for several reasons. It frees up IT (Information Technology) resources for more important tasks and allows focus on core competencies. It has the potential for reducing costs by leveraging economies of scale. It also allows an organization to take advantage of application service provider expertise. With these advantages, however, comes a radical change to the way IT operates. Applications must be built differently, methods for supporting applications change, new roles and skillsets are required, and requirements must be specified in a rather precise fashion.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore different models of outsourcing and what challenges and solutions arise for each model. Session participants will work in small groups to brainstorm challenges and solutions and share the results with other participants. All participants will take away from the session the collective wisdom of the group applied to the challenges of oursourcing applications.

Yvonne Wilson(yvonne.wilson@corp.sun.com)

Sun Microsystems Yvonne Wilson works as an Enterprise Architect in the IT department of Sun Microsystems. She has held developer, educator, architect and management roles and has focused most recently on achieving paradigm shifts in organizations.

Christopher Ferris(chris.ferris@sun.com)

Sun Microsystems Chris Ferris is an Enterprise Architect within the IT organization of Sun Microsystems. He has 20 years of IT experience as a software engineer and architect. His current focus has been with regards to exploring the synergy between Java and XML and the potential uses of these technologies to enable business application systems architectures to meet the demands of the dotcom-age.

Topics

An initial list of topics will be presented during the session, but participants will have an opportunity to amend this list of topics as interest dictates. The initial list of topics includes:

Benefits

Participants will learn from each other's experiences in the area of outsourcing. Participants will collaborate to brainstorm challenges and solutions.
 
 
Session: Think Tank 75 minutes Level: intermediate 
Audience:
Participants are expected to have fairly extensive experience in at least one aspect of application architecture such as defining a corporate data model, describing and measuring business processes, designing and developing distributed applications for the internet environment, implementing a corporate security model, supporting applications, and auditing application environments. Participants are expected to have some experience in planning or implementing the outsourcing of applications. Any such background is welcome, the more diverse the group, the better the session will be.		 Max 25

Material

Paper, post-its, posters, flip charts, overhead transparencies, pens.

Delivery

Participants will be encouraged to work together, their efforts facilitated by the session leaders.

Format

Think tank - small group format, with lots of opportunities to collaborate.

Structure

  1. Intro by session leaders
  2. Initial list of topics presented. Participants can add additional topics of interest to the list.
  3. Participants divide into small groups and introduce themselves to each other/group and are assigned or choose a topic to work on.
  4. Participants brainstorm impact of outsourcing in their topic area by identifying the assumptions/procedures which no longer hold true when applications are outsourced, and the new types of requirements arising from outsourcing.
  5. Participants brainstorm to identify the challenges to achieving the requirements they identified and ideas for overcoming these challenges.
  6. Each small group presents their ideas to the larger group.
  7. Participants may contribute ideas to another group's topic throughout the session.
  8. Session leaders will summarize and conclude the session.
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