Six Outsourcing “Do’s”

Outsourcing your IT environment is an important decision for any business. Whether it be online backups, offsite backups or anything in between, it helps to keep certain tips in mind when choosing among mainframe outsourcing companies. Here are some “do’s” to help you in your outsourcing decisions.

1) Change Control: Make sure you understand and have a voice in how the change control process will occur. It is important to have a scheduled window for infrastructure level changes to occur, and that the process is complementary to the culture of your organization.

2) Visibility and Transparency: Review what reports you will receive on a monthly basis. As you add or remove services in the future, you want to have a good understanding up-front on how those changes will impact your overall contract pricing.

3) Access to service and technical support: Ideally, you want to have access to the system-level engineers who will be managing your systems. These engineers can not only answer questions and provide feedback, but also offer consulting on areas for possible improvements within your environment.

4) Cost drivers – up or down: Review any capacity on-demand offerings to see if there are models where you only pay for what you use, and have access to additional resources if needed.

5) Contract flexibility: The more specific the contract, the smoother future changes will happen, ensuring modifications and capacity changes will be handled in a professional manner.

6) Remote managed services vs. fully outsourced: Where will you run your operations? Deciding which model is right for you depends on the current age of your infrastructure, and capacity of your data center environment.