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The FTE Labor vs. Managed Services Decision

Industry buzz says companies can realize more value via outsourcing by moving away from the FTE or contract labor model and opting instead for managed services. The FTE model is dead, they say. But don’t believe everything you hear. The managed services model in outsourcing sounds great. It beckons with reduced costs and the

Deloitte: The Global Services Dark Horse Challenging Accenture

Accenture has beautifully moved into the number-one spot among transformational service providers. They snatched it from IBM, their biggest competitor for that spot. How did they do it? Accenture created a significant gap between itself and IBM in two game-changing aspects: customer access and talent. Accenture gained a leg up on IBM in customer

How to Eliminate Your Competitors in IT Services Sales

As a result of the consumerization of IT within today’s businesses, many technology service providers struggle to find a sales approach that drives greater growth. With CIOs now playing a far less prominent role as an intermediary determining the best solutions and, instead, business stakeholders making buying decisions, traditional solution selling is not a

What’s Differentiating about TCS and Cognizant?

It’s earnings season for the outsourcing industry. So far, we’re seeing mixed results: modest growth in most companies (including Accenture, IBM, Infosys and Wipro ) and strong growth in a few. Notably, Cognizant and TCS are pulling away from the pack. Or as my old running coach would say, they are showing the competition

Immigration and H-1B Visa Reform — Dead on Arrival, or Alive and Kicking?

I’ve blogged before about the impending immigration reform, with its accompanying H-1B visa reform and onerous provisions that will reshape the global services industry. Congress is now halfway down the path to deciding on immigration reform. The scuttlebutt in the global services industry is that immigration reform is dead and there’s no need to

Will Infosys Need to Acquire BPO and Infrastructure Properties Before it Can Reignite Traditional Outsourcing Growth?

Recently Infosys posted better-than-expected earnings. But it also indicated an upcoming adjustment in strategy, stating it plans to pursue growth through traditional outsourcing contracts and will deemphasize its focus on software as a source of growth. Infosys has long been a stalwart of the Indian heritage firms and built its impressive growth and profitability

How Sales and Marketing Teams Can Avoid Being Bitten by the Paradigm Shift in IT Spend Decisions

Organizations are facing a paradigm shift in the way they envision, initiate and fund technology that drives business value. As discussed in my prior blog post, The Curveball Impact on IT Spend Decisions, a shift in influence has created two distinct buying markets within an organization. These two markets behave very differently and thus

The Curveball Impact on IT Spend Decisions

There is an interesting new twist these days on how organizations initiate, fund, and make IT spend decisions. It’s sparked by two major trends: Nicholas Carr’s 2003 Harvard Business Review article claiming that “IT doesn’t matter” and the consumerization of IT. As a result, some organizations no longer view their CIOs as responsible for

Empire Building: The Impact of IBM’s Acquisition of SoftLayer Technologies

The cloud services space just got a lot more interesting. Announced earlier this month, IBM paid a hefty price — $2 billion — to buy Dallas, Texas-based SoftLayer Technologies, the world’s largest privately held cloud computing infrastructure provider. IBM is now well on the way to delivering on the goal stated in its 2012

The Blind Side Blitz: How Business Users Impact Next-Generation IT Spend

Seemingly out of nowhere, users hit enterprise IT spend on its blind side. Like a blitzing 265-pound football linebacker that the quarterback doesn’t see running up behind him to tackle him, business units and end users blitzed past the IT group and rapidly adopted cloud, mobile and other next-generation IT solutions wherever and whenever