In the outsourcing industry, business IT outsourcing is by far the most prevalent. In IT outsourcing, the business chooses to outsource a part or their entire IT process. Change management skills are vital when doing this. If not handled well, it can lead to internal discontent with existing IT staff viewing outsourcing as affront on their ability to run the function effectively. Few sectors have so embraced IT outsourcing as academic institutions.

As opinion leaders and shapers, it is good to see higher education embrace IT outsourcing solutions with enthusiasm. With the ever-increasing size and complexity of academic institutions, IT outsourcing has played a great part in helping these institutions meet the current demands. Throw in the growth in distance learning, e-learning, webinars and webcasts and the role that IT plays in delivering knowledge becomes apparent. With such ambitious goals, IT outsourcing has become the most feasible solution today’s academic institutions.

Keeping pace with the developments in technology and finding the highly skilled manpower necessary to both keep track of these developments and integrate them into the institution’s processes makes it important for firms to hire a third party to manage the process. In addition, IT departments in such institutions are under growing pressure to manage and reduce has technology budget. Business IT outsourcing thus naturally becomes the natural avenue through which such institutions can push down expenses and still provide world class learning facilities.

Academic institutions have developed different methods of IT outsourcing. The main business IT outsourcing concepts are E-source, Net-source, Co-source, Co-operatively outsource and internal outsourcing. What do each of these mean? Lets look at a few. Internal outsourcing is the process of outsourcing IT functions to different parts of the same institution. E-sourcing is an internet based outsourcing approach that uses an application service provider (ASP) delivery model. This particular approach allows the delivery of business IT outsourcing over the World Wide Web.

Net-sourcing is more complex than E-sourcing. It involves the purchase of several licenses that permit the institution to access the browser based application software without necessarily having to install the software or to purchase the equipment that run the application. This business IT outsourcing approach is highly cost effective for the institution since only a small percentage of the student populations use these applications. Pay per license means payment is only done based on usage. But the success of this type of outsourcing is based on the careful selection of vendors that agree to a short term renewable contract and that allows the institution to own all the data.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!