All about IT Governance

For those who are not following  Symantec in the past 6 months, you may be in for a surprise that EDS was the appointed outsource vendor for taking over most portions of the IT. Although, the details are a bit sketchy, it is our belief that a minimal IT is being owned by Symantec and the rest of IT services including client services, help desk services, infrastructure management and core business applications management is handed out to EDI.

The following are the lessons we have gathered:

a. There are 3 schools of outsourcing:

1. Outsource business secondary services (helpdesk, client services etc.)

2. Outsource a portion of your growth services (Internal QA, Internal Development for IT)

3. Full-outsource: Outsource everything except Governance (including IT Security), Compliance and Vendor Management

We believe what has hapenned at Symantec is #3 above. It is a fairly large responsibility however, it is very common in Hospital environment.

b. Symantec & EDS are now in a wedlock - it is hard to even imagine looking back

c. We strongly believe, if the company is in either Run or Grow mode (not transform mode), then ‘full-outsource’ may work.

d. EDS does not come cheap however, if Symantec strongly believes in ‘Grow’ mode, maybe IT was a distraction (I know, I can’t believe I am saying it).

e. Company employees would have to be transitioned in various packages however, it may be hard to build a team ever again to build out IT - so skeletal team within above areas and ‘hard to find’ liaison people would have to be retained.

We are a team of experienced IT executives serving 3+ billion dollar companies to keep the IT lights ON. Although, the ‘dial-tone’ service delivery is talked about in the past 5 years, this set of blogs is to present the challenges we are experiencing to offer ‘dial-tone’ level of services and how we are trying to solve them.