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For example, while some organizations continue to maintain PCs with in-house staff, many have found that it can be more cost-effective to outsource this function. Why? Because even though in-house maintenance can result in somewhat more timely and more customer-focused repair service, the cost is often twice as high as it is for external contracts, particularly when local markets are competitive. Unless you have the critical mass needed to justify a large maintenance staff, you're almost always fighting an uphill battle to hire and retain enough staff to get the job done.

Commodity outsourcing makes sense for many organizations because the functions delegated are nonstrategic. In the network arena, look at opportunities for nonstrategic outsourcing in order to free your technical staff to pursue more complex projects. Contract out installation of fiber and twisted-pair cabling while retaining design and project oversight responsibilities. There's nothing wrong with having in-house staff do an occasional pull of a half-dozen horizontal UTP station cables or some fiber risers in a building, but you should look to contract-out jobs of any significant size.

Outsourcing also can provide you with flexibility when the work you're doing is either a one-time project or seasonal. A combination of factors--including budget cycles, weather conditions and teaching schedules--conspire to make many of our projects at Syracuse University highly seasonal in nature. Doing the work ourselves would require us to pay much more overtime or hire more technicians who would probably have idle time during other periods of the year.

Outsourcing also makes sense when events force tight deadlines. Recently, we had a major construction project that involved installing several thousand feet of underground conduit filled with fiber and rewiring two high-rise buildings. Because funding was approved only months before the desired completion date, it would have been impossible for us to take on these projects on our own. Instead, we worked with an outsourcing organization to complete these projects on time and within budget. Did we save money? Not really, because we had to cover their overhead costs, but it was worth the extra expense to be able to deliver service when needed.

And one final value of these exercises should not be ignored: When your chief financial officer or some other senior manager does come to the table with a proposal to consider a radical outsourcing plan, you'll have plenty of experience to draw on and a track record of responsible contracting with outside service providers.

Give Insourcing a Try Although persuasive arguments can be made for outsourcing tactical functions performed by your central IT organization, this same organization should consider providing similar outsourcing services to departmental units. In organizations that decentralize some IT support functions, many departments are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their desktop computing and LAN environments, but they're leery of turning over all control to the central IT organization. Usually, they lack the size necessary to justify professional systems management or they feel unqualified to effectively manage a competent staff of computing professionals.

The answer may be to enter into contractual arrangements with the central IT organization to provide nonstrategic services like LAN management. We've done this at our site, providing a subscription LAN service to more than 1,200 users, and the e conomies of scale make it a cost-effective proposition.

When insourcing such a function, you actually enhance your overall IT strategy by leveraging technology standards for the benefit of the entire organization. Most department members don't care whether their file and print services come from Windows NT or NetWare delivered over IP or IPX, on a switched or routed network backbone. In most cases, they don't really care whether they browse with Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, or if they send their e-mail via a proprietary LAN-based system or Internet-standard protocols like POP or IMAP. But you care because these decisions have a profound impact on your technology and support infrastucture.

My experience suggests that the key to successful outsourcing arrangements involves a tactical delegation of IT functions that let you retain authority over strategic decisions that affect the bottom line. Unfortunately, this is a difficult challenge for many senior managers, especially when their primary motivation for outsourcing is based on lack of confidence in IT management. A decision to delegate design and management responsibilities to an external provider should only be undertaken with a willingness and recognition of the likelihood of higher costs and diminished flexibility. Under certain circumstances, this may be justifiable, but keep your eyes open. If you're confronted by a management initiative to consider outsourcing, the worst possible strategy is to dismiss it outright. By forming tactical outsourcing arrangements and familiarizing yourself with the successes and failures of other organizations, you'll be much better positioned.

Dave Molta is director of network and system services at Syracuse University. He can be reached at dmolta@nwc.com.