Irene Pimentel

There have been no IT deals of great interest this month which is to be expected so early in the calendar year. As with any major government IT program, now that the launch of the federal government’s e-health record system is being ramped up, reports and debates on the system including any setbacks and flaws have increased this month and will probably keep doing so until July. Forecasts are levelling off, but there are interesting comments on predictions for the outsourcing landscape by the IAOP and Outsourcing Centre and it will be of further interest to follow developments over the next twelve months.

Deals during the month have been comparatively unexciting, with a real focus on analysis of major issues in 2011 and forecasts for 2012. What is a little disturbing and confusing about this month’s news items were the Federal Government announcements about areas for planned IT spending cuts, and increases. It is shaving costs on some essential IT (such as equipment upgrade and maintenance) and cutting vendor panels and new projects while it continues to invest huge amounts into spending on IT for students. While this appears to be a good idea in theory the value of diverting this spending may be questionable. The perceived need to get technology into student’s hands, within what is a tight timeframe, could be mostly for government PR. However this rush could lead to an inability to negotiate the best deals in terms of price and reduced leverage to procure quality items.

While the number of outsourcing transactions has reduced in Q3 this year, the deals this month are more interesting than usual. News largely focused on project rollouts of previous sourcing deals and there seems to be a lot more tender and project announcements.

News has been very thin this month. Apple product releases, vendor offerings, the dispute with Samsung and the death of Steve Jobs have really dominated the news. IT company CEO and CIO employment was also featured quite heavily. There were a few deals and developments, but of most interest is the establishment of a new Australian outsourcing industry body. Hopefully we will get some significant insight from them in the future.

Contracts continue to be issued in relation to the NBN build. Both Transfield Services and the Syntheo JV have been awarded significant two year contracts. On the other hand it is interesting to note that the value of IT services contracts globally has fallen again in Q2 2011. A fall of 40% in the past year now brings contract value to its lowest level in over eight years.

While there is not as much activity as last month there are still a lot of interesting sourcing deals, both in government and private enterprise. Although small in number there are some interesting projects around, particularly for government bodies.

A very busy month with a significant amount of material. A lot of deals have been done and there are a large number of projects under consideration. Additionally there are some interesting initiatives to be found in the other news section.

A very exciting month! Not just lots of deals, but big ones too (mostly due to the NBN Co). No real tenders this month, but lots of project announcements in the Queensland Government budget in the wake of flood recovery

This month’s outsourcing highlights are especially interesting – there has been lots of activity in buying and selling outsourcing businesses and specialised business units. There have also been a lot of announcements about new service offerings, or expanded service offerings by vendors. You’ll see examples of this in the general news section, as well as an article that talks about BPO firms less likely to experience growth if they have a singular focus, and not several service streams, like IT services. All these things show the need for diversification in outsourcing service offerings, as well as streamlining, expanding and very targeted offerings in specialist industries (like health care, mining or cloud specific etc).

This month’s outsourcing highlights are especially interesting – there has been lots of activity in buying and selling outsourcing businesses and specialised business units. There have also been a lot of announcements about new service offerings, or expanded service offerings by vendors. You’ll see examples of this in the general news section, as well as an article that talks about BPO firms less likely to experience growth if they have a singular focus, and not several service streams, like IT services. All these things show the need for diversification in outsourcing service offerings, as well as streamlining, expanding and very targeted offerings in specialist industries (like health care, mining or cloud specific etc).