Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Whoppering IT infrastructure?

Cem Basman posted today an analisis of requirements on how to create an IT Outsourcing business for small and medium businesses.
So what could reasonably be outsourced for SMB, and how?

1) IT Infrastructure
2) Business Applications
3) Accounting
4) Advertising
5) CRM/VRM
6) Administration
7) Software development

I think mainly IT infrastructure and generic workflows for every company or industry specific workflows.
Since IT is said to be no longer a differential I think that this only is true in the sense of basic services that are just expected to be functional and where cost is really an issue.
What could specifically be provided?

-IT Infrastructure
eMail
Domain & Web Site
Filesystem
Telephony
WebConferencing
Workgroup functions(calendar, task tracking, milestones)
-Business Applications
Calculations
Documents
-Accounting
Accounting
Banking (Invoices, Payments)
-Advertising
Online advertising
Newsletter management
Community building tools
Plug In for third party service provider (Call Center & Mailings)
-CRM/VRM
Client & vendor data management.
-Administration
Workflow engine for defining business processes.
Web Applications Framework for rapidly creating Web Applications.
-Software Development
Centralised outsourcing software development where necessary.

-What is the benefit for new clients?
The startup time is drastically reduced. The cost should be low. The client is free to focus on tasks which generate or are expected to generate income.

-Why could existing companies use this?
Migration of their IT to reduce costs and enhance the service quality at the same time.

-How could an ecosystem be created on such a basis?
By franchising migration services to map existing infrastructure and processes to the available tools and services (standardisation)?
By offering a framework where highly specialised service providers could participate and provide "building blocks" (market creation)?
By offering a local service directory where physical goods and services are provided based on the defined interfaces?
By offering defined interfaces and ensuring the functionality of those interfaces?

Anything more that makes sense?

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