Stan Gibson

CHICAGO—IT still does matter. And it will continue to matter for the foreseeable future. Those messages resounded strongly at the annual Symposium of the Society for Information Management here this week. The views were provoked by the message of opening night guest speaker Nicholas G. Carr, author of the recently published book “Does IT Matter?” […]

Dude, youre getting an Enterprise Command Center! Thats probably a line youll never hear, but if you run a data center in China with lots of Dell equipment, thats exactly what you will be getting. If you run a Dell-centric data center in the United States, youve already got one, even if you dont realize […]

Following the disastrous outages of 1999, online auction company eBay Inc. launched an overhaul of its IT infrastructure, rebuilding its data centers around a grid-type architecture and rewriting its applications in Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition. That process was completed in July. Now Marty Abbott, senior vice president of technology, is tasked with maintaining uptime […]

Youre troubled by the idea of outsourcing and would like to be better informed? Forty-year industry veteran Edward Yourdon has written a book, “Outsource: Competing in the Global Productivity Race,” to be published by Prentice Hall PTR in October that covers the A-to-Z of the topic. Because the book is at once a primer and […]

Everyones always looking for a better deal, arent they? Hey, better deals are closely related to the pursuit of happiness, which is, after all, one of our nations founding principles. So why is it that outsourcers and their customers are always so proud to announce really long deals—deals of seven, eight, even 10 years—that are […]

In Hewlett-Packard Co.s bid to be an enterprise partner on a par with such heavy hitters as IBM Global Services, no deal is more important than its outsourcing contract with consumer goods company The Procter & Gamble Co. One year after HP, of Palo, Alto, Calif., took over P&Gs worldwide IT operations, executives at both […]

Staples Inc. is the worlds largest retailer of office supplies, having grown to $13 billion in sales since its founding in 1985. With the advent of Web sales through Staples.com and StaplesLink.com in the 1990s, the company developed a multichannel approach to retailing that encompasses online, catalog and retail-store sales. Now the company is seeking […]

The large outsourcing deal is back. So claims outsourcing consultancy TPI in a study that finds large deals being signed at a pace ahead of a year ago. “Megadeals appear to be making a comeback,” said Peter Allen, partner and managing director of TPI. In apparently supporting evidence that emerged the same week the study […]

In its race with archrival Office Depot Inc., Staples Inc. is tackling a problem that retailers in many markets are facing: coordination of a variety of sales channels. “The big buzzword today is to have a customer-focused organization because you have all these channels,” said Patti Freeman Davis, an analyst at JupiterResearch, in New York. […]

So you want to hire an outsourcer? First, hire a lawyer. The field of outsourcing law, although far from new, is changing as legal, commercial and technology environments evolve. Some best practices have remained the same for years, while others have emerged only recently. The current trend toward multisourcing—using multiple outsourcers—requires unique contractual provisions, according […]