InformationWeek – Clouds Vs. Outsourcing: The Next Battleground

Clamor for private cloud services from infrastructure-as-a-service providers threatens traditional outsourcing firms like HP and IBM.

IBM, HP, and other established vendors entering cloud computing are often already outsourcing partners to the firms that are now frequently looking for an infrastructure service provider. But that doesn’t mean they have an inside track on the business. They do not.

Established vendors are going to face stiff competition for outsourcing business from the new infrastructure providers: Amazon, Rackspace, and others, according to a report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

“Service providers in the IT outsourcing space have, after all, profited handsomely by taking on their customers’ highly complex, one-off collections of IT assets and finding ways to manage them more efficiently than their customers are able to,” states the Pricewaterhouse report.

“But the essence of cloud computing is a move towards highly standardized racks of commodity servers,” with software that manages the racks and allows customers to run applications on them through self-service. “Where’s the IT outsourcing opportunity in that?” said the report, sponsored by Mike Pearl, partner and cloud computing leader at PriceWaterhouse.

More of the InformationWeek article from Charles Babcock

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.