NEW DELHI: Fifty-three percent of organizations in Europe said they will outsource more in 2010, and 40 percent of organizations are planning to increase their external IT services spending, according to a recent survey from Gartner Inc.

The survey found that the percentage of organizations spending 50 percent to more than 75 percent of their IT spending on external service providers is on the rise. "However, the results also showed that the pressure on capital and IT operating expenditure is still strong, and European organizations expect providers to deliver further cost reductions," said Claudio Da Rold, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Although 40 percent of respondents said that they will increase the external share of their budget, only 24 percent said that they will increase the budget for providers, and almost a quarter of organizations still expect that their IT services budget will continue to decrease in 2010."
The online survey was conducted among 206 organizations in Europe during in the first quarter of 2010. The survey was directed at individuals who were involved in decision making on outsourcing and IT services in 2010.
The survey also showed that organizations of all sizes and with IT budgets of various magnitude are now showing an interest in outsourcing. It found that 14.7 percent of organizations with IT budgets of less than €1 million expressed interest in outsourcing, which compares to only 6.1 percent of organizations in this category in 2009.
In times of recession, organizations usually concentrate on cost cutting and optimization, followed by a recovery period with a clear focus on business growth and operating competitively. In Europe, things appear to be more complex. Although respondents in Europe are still focusing on cost control when defining their goals for outsourcing and service provider relationships, they increasingly require access to resources and capabilities, flexibility and scalability. "This means that 2010 is bringing sourcing strategists in Europe a more complex set of business requirements that aren't easier to address," said Da Rold.
After a few years of continuously increasing interest in industrialized services based on alternative delivery models, such as software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing and infrastructure utility (IU), interest among European organizations has peaked, while adoption is on the rise. For example, SaaS and IUs' implementations were up 6.1 percent and 5.1 percent in 2010, respectively.
"Organizations in Europe are expecting — or are in need of — growth, but they are also still highly cautious," said Mr. Da Rold. "Although we conducted this survey in the first quarter of 2010, before the start of the Greek financial crisis, we believe that the cautious expectation of growth will continue in Europe beyond 2010. Regardless of the future direction of the economy, European businesses and their service providers need to optimize their multisourced environments, while increasingly adopting industrialized IT services."

Read more: 40% European cos to increase outsourcing in 2010 - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/outsourcing/40-European-cos-to-increase-outsourcing-in-2010/articleshow/6512698.cms#ixzz0yrndg1Sq

We use easily counterfeited identification, Social Security numbers that are written on the sides of buses and we rely on the anonymity of the phone, fax, internet and snail mail as a means of application. In other countries they solve problems. They have priorities and don’t deal with the rhetoric.  They put security first, convenience second...

https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/3935--Why-Americans-Identities-Are-Easily-Stolen.html

The mechanical wonders that once used kerosene and chain drive squeegee rollers to mass produce wet-paper copies are long gone. It’s a digital copier these days that falls into a gray area between Classification of Documents and Enterprise Cyber Security.  As technology in the copy machine industry has evolved many of these systems now contain large hard drives which retain full and complete images of each and every copy made on the system...

https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/3927-DATA-LEAKAGE-a-la-Digital-Copy-Machine-.html

Securing an organization's assets requires work, and there are many different ways to classify controls. This white paper examines three common types of controls are administrative, technical, and physical.

Regardless of how these controls are grouped or what list you use to classify, security is all about how you apply these controls. If they are not applied and enforced, effective security cannot be achieved...

https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/3925-Three-Steps-To-Securing-Your-Network.html

This weekend, BusinessWeek.com will feature our own Anthony M. Freed, Editor and Business Development Director for the Infosec Island Network.

https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/3371-Infosec-Island-Editor-Featured-at-BusinessWeekcom.html
Anthony is being honored for his active participation as a member of BusinessWeek's Business Exchange, with over 3000 contributions.  This is the sixth time Anthony has been selected as a featured user by their editorial staff.

Infosec Island is committed to serving the risk mitigation needs of SMBs and mid-market enterprises across numerous industries, government agencies, legal, financial, healthcare, educational, nonprofit organizations, and the information security community at large.

With nearly 500 clients and a decade of outsourcing experience, Advent has the industry's largest client base using its outsourced services. Advent OnDemand(SM) serves a growing number of market segments within the investment management industry, including independent advisors, RIAs, broker/dealers, wealth managers, private client services, family offices and asset managers.

Here is a follow-up to my post from yesterday discussing additional research on the growth of Saas integration in the enterprise:

According to a recent survey commissioned by Avanade, a business technology services provider, companies are embracing the use of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for the most critical applications that they consider differentiators for their businesses. The majority of respondents said they are deploying SaaS for customer relationship management (52 percent) and business intelligence (47 percent), ranking these the highest areas of SaaS use among several areas including enterprise resource planning, collaboration software, and financial systems.

Separately, the majority of respondents reported that these applications were considered differentiators and strategic weapons for their businesses versus the competition. More than 40 percent of respondents named customer relationship management and more than 37 percent named business intelligence as crucial differentiators.