13.1 Running a service is not a system

In-source, out-source, right-source

The last ten years has seen the trend to out-source IT services and development continue to increase. This should not be a surprise when we consider the risk and cost of getting it wrong. Out-source companies come with the allure of having solved all problems previously and having a large pool of experienced staff and many organisations have significantly reduced the cost and risk of running their IT systems as a result.

Central to a successful out-source contract is a contract and a service description and underpinning set of requirements that are well defined. Good example candidates for out-sourcing are Payroll or Desktop management. In both cases, an organisation can describe what it is that it wants and the amount of change required going into the future can be estimated accurately.

It’s in the nature of our-sourced contracts that you describe to the supplier what you want but refrain from telling them how to do it.

If your IT application is the core of what your organisation does (such as the learndirect LMS) and you know you are going to undergo an annual cycle of change then in-sourcing your operations should be considered.

Having in-sourced the learndirect operations, we have seen a significant reduction in cost and have increased our service availability to>99.9%

Open-source

If you have in-sourced your application development or hosting then you have the opportunity to exploit open source tools and applications for competitive or service advantage (are they the same thing?)

Having in-sourced the operations and now the development of our core application, we have put open source technology at the core of our technology strategy.

While we retain Oracle as our database of choice we have adopted a wide range of open source tools, Apache, SQUID, JBOSS, Hybernate, MySQL, Linux, to name but a few.

The advantages are obvious:

• They are standards compliant, or effectively comprise a cross-platform standard in their own right.
• They are robust and open to peer review such that issues and problems are rapidly identified and resolved
• They are often designed and built by practitioners and as such have solutions for real world problems built into them
• They increasingly come with support contracts

Summary

Looking back on what I have written it’s a bit rambling, however the key points I want to make are.

• Don’t confuse running a Service and running an application. Monitoring and non-functional requirements such as usability, supportability, maintainability, availability make the difference.
• Monitoring and its application is critical in running a service
• Getting a technology strategy that supports the business and recognizes that once started it’s often expensive to change.
• In-sourcing /out-sourcing right-sourcing will impact what you have control of.
• Open source tools can be used to run world class infrastructure.

I hope you found something to make you think in this piece. We live in amazing times. The richest person in the world 10 years ago did not have one tenth of the knowledge we now have at our fingertips. Lastly, in the words of my favourite bumper sticker of all time, if you think that education is expensive try ignorance.