The following is a post by Lijoe Antony of Bobcares, who will be presenting his session “Managing Risk in Outsourcing” at HostingCon 2010 on Monday, July 19th, at 2:00pm in the Business Development track.
The Hosting Industry is going through a stage of consolidation and is maturing at a fast pace. Post the Y2K bust, people feared jumping into any business related to the Internet. However the Hosting Industry has changed all that. With the low cost of starting a hosting business and the innovative trends, plans and pricing wars, it has resulted in creating a very competitive yet high volume business with immense potential to grow.
Over the past few years, I have seen a lot of hosting companies mushroom and have seen many of them close down or end up being acquired.Some that have had their foundations laid well have continued to grow.
Outsourcing support whether to offshore or onshore support teams have always been a trial and error approach. This is primarily because any new hosting company owner approaches support just like he would go to shop in a market.
The vendor who offers the cheapest tomatoes or potatoes ends up being the winner. However only later does the customer realize that it has ended up rotting from within while for some it has been like a lottery win. We spend hundreds of dollars to get the best hardware, best NOC, bug free control panels and yet when it comes to the guy who is the face of your company on a daily basis, you look for the cheapest available option.
Bobcares believes outsourcing support should never end up being a cross to bear because of our shortsightedness on the TOS (Terms of Service) we should keep in mind. As a hosting services provider your best bet to compete with the giants in the Industry is to leverage the cost effectiveness of Outsourcing but it should be done with proper monitoring systems in place whether legal or technical. If done the right way, outsourcing your Human Resource requirements helps you focus on your core competency, i.e., marketing and selling your hosting services while your customer gets the best deal.
About Lijoe Antony:
Lijoe Antony is an Executive Member at Bobcares (http://bobcares.com) ,and presently oversees Information Security aspects at Bobcares. He also manages Human Resource Recrutiments as well as Mergers and Acquisitions interests of Bobcares. He joined Bobcares in 2002. He can be contacted at lijoe[at]bobcares.com.
Register for HostingCon 2010 Now and attend this session!
I have been reading about researches where total IT solution could lead into loss of innovation in the company.
It quite makes sense, how total dependence could make companies unaware of the needs to recruit good local IT staffs.
What do you think about this?