InformationWeek

Plenty To Choose From

There's a company for any type of outsourcing

By Deborah Asbrand
Issue date: August 14, 1995

Businesses have no shortage of outsourcing vendors to choose from, whether outsourcing PC or network management services. Mainframe outsourcing vendors such as IBM's Integrated Systems Solutions Corp., EDS, and Unisys have long supported client-server environments. So have long-distance carriers AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, which service data as well as voice networks. Also ringing in are the regional Bell operating companies such as Bell Atlantic, which recently established a division called Network Integration Services.

But there are some surprising, new players in the outsourcing market. In June, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., a $5-billion Chicago publisher, merged with LANSystems Inc., a New York systems integrator.

The parent company's subsidiary, Donnelley Business Services, had been a longtime supplier of document- and image-management services to the legal and financial industries. With the merger, the company now supplies overall network management services. "Frankly, when [our customers] turn to us and ask why their image takes a full minute to appear onscreen, it's usually a network issue," says DBS president Rhonda Kochlefel.

Computer manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Unisys are happy to run portions of a client-server setup, even if the business doesn't use their products. Integrators are also becoming outsourcers. Future Now, an $800 million Cincinnati systems integrator with 25 branches, has diversified into outsourcing.

Even the venture-capital community sees promise in the outsourcing mar ket. Businesses can expect more segmentation and specialization to develop. "Right now, this market is so hot everyone is doing relatively well," says Val Srivar, a Meta Group VP in Reston, Va. "But the ones who will get ahead are those who do a good job of defining what they will and won't do."

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