| Modern organizations, struggling to maintain profitability through cost reduction strategies, have pursued the outsourcing of information services extensively over the past three years. This explosion in outsourcing contracts has created a trend that is rapidly becoming a major development in the history of information services. Outsourcing is more comprehensive than ever before, ranging from contracting software support and application programming, to the transfer of entire information service departments.; Published materials to date have been limited to descriptions of recent contracts or general suggestions about outsourcing, and thus have not generated a framework by which decisions regarding outsourcing might be analyzed. This study attempts to fill the void by summarizing key contracts to date, analyzing the raging debate around outsourcing, and presenting guidelines to assist in making an outsourcing decision. |
