PerkinElmer To Ring In New Year By Outsourcing

PerkinElmer Inc., a $1.69 billion developer and manufacturer of optoelectronic instruments and fluid science components, will begin the new year by outsourcing IT functions that support key business areas. By the end of January, the manufacturer will migrate the hosting and management of its Web site and Oracle 11i applications to Sprint E-Solutions, a services unit within Sprint Corp.

When PerkinElmer began looking for a new service provider, managed services were important criteria. The company's previous service provider lacked both the technical skills and the mind-set to take ownership of problems with Web-site performance, CIO Tom Gernon says. Gernon, who refused to name PerkinElmer's previous Web-hosting provider, says Sprint E- Solutions can integrate the company's Web site with back-end financial-management and database applications as well as manage and monitor those operations.

Sprint E-Solutions has been hosting PerkinElmer's Web site since November, and the company plans to extend that relationship in late January by migrating a Hyperion Solutions Corp. financial-management system over to Sprint's care. Sprint E-Solutions also will play a critical role in supporting PerkinElmer's life-sciences unit, which Gernon says is growing rapidly through the acquisition of companies such as Packard BioScience and NEN Life Science Products Inc. Today, Sprint will take over the hosting of the life-sciences unit's Oracle 11i applications.

Although PerkinElmer has previously outsourced its Web hosting, this is the first time the company is outsourcing hosting and management of IT systems that support life sciences. "The main challenge for me is ensuring there's no business disruption," Gernon says. Rather than build its IT infrastructure to host the Web site and invest in application and network-management software from Hewlett-Packard, BMC Software, or Computer Associates, PerkinElmer has turned to Sprint E-Solutions to operate areas of IT that don't give the manufacturer any competitive advantage in its market.