Companies Moving Away from Outsourcing?

If there is anything like a pattern to enterprise information technology and communications strategies, it is that strategies oscillate between the "do it yourself" and "outsource it" poles. There are periods when the trend swings one way, and other times when the trend reverses.

Consider the ways enterprises source IT expertise. With all the talk about companies becoming more “agile,” many have taken the tack of outsourcing their IT operations to service providers of various types. But you always can expect a counter move at some point.

So it is that companies in some sectors such as healthcare and retail are moving to build their own IT teams, in some cases reversing course on a strategy of outsourcing.

Best Buy has announced that it will triple the size of the company's in-house IT staff by hiring 200 more tech professionals in 2012. Best Buy had largely outsourced IT operations, but the company's recently-hired CIO Jody Davis has reversed course.

Some attribute the oscillation to the logical value proposition any new CIO might want to bring to the table, which is that "what we have done does not provide enough value." It almost doesn't matter whether the current approach is "outsourcing" or "insourcing." What a new CIO often wants to do is prove his or her own value by changing course. You can argue about the ultimate value for any enterprise where that happens. But it seems to happen often enough that the oscillation pattern remains intact.

companies move away from outsourcing

Google Wallet Users Make First Purchases

Customers make their first purchases with Google Wallet in San Francisco and New York.

Is Apple Working on 7.85-inch iPads?

Apple is currently testing 7.85-inch iPad displays from Taiwanese panel maker AU Optronics, according to The Economic Daily News. That is interesting because it would contradict earlier and emphatic statements from Apple that 10-inch screens were the "minimum" for a tablet device. 


But Amazon's Kindle Fire and Samsung's Galaxy Tab might have Apple "thinking differently" about smaller-screen devices.

The Economic Daily News predicts that Apple will launch a 7.85-inch iPad early in 2012.


Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in 2010 that screens smaller than 10 inches were too small to support great tablet apps.


Is Apple testing 7.85-inch iPad displays?

Twitter Is At 250 Million Tweets Per Day

In September 2010 Twitter was seeing 90 million tweets per day. By January 2011 tweets were up to 100 million. at In October 2011 tweets were up to 250 million, says Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.


The company has gone from having 30 percent of its 100 million users active every day in January 2011 to over 50 percent active daily users in October 2011. . The recent Apple iOS 5 Twitter integration has notably increased signups 300 percent. 

Twitter Is At 250 Million Tweets Per Day

Moble Data Traffic Doubles in 12 Months

Mobile data traffic continues to grow, doubling from the second quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of 2011, according to findings of a new measurement from Ericsson.

The second quarter of 2011 saw eight percent growth, Ericsson says. 

Ericsson says an active smart phone user generates more than 1 MBytes worth of traffic each day. In North America, high-end smart phones generate twice the traffic than comparable smartphones at the operators analyzed in Asia and Europe, Ericsson  says.


The findings are based on Ericsson mobile broadband measurements during the second quarter of 2011 at four different operators in mature markets in Europe, Asia and North America. 

What Needs To Happen For Tablets To Replace Laptops?

Tablets, for the most part, are not a very good substitute for the work capabilities of a PC. Sure, you can add an external keyboard, which might or might not work so well, depending on how much you routinely must create text, and how fast you can type.

Slow typers with little volume of input can make it work. But if you look around you at conferences or other venues when people are away from their desktops, you often can see that tablets are one more device to carry around, as people now have their notebooks, their smart phone and now a tablet with them.

There will, over time, be more changes in both tablet and PC spaces, to try and blend the two functions of "content creation" and "content consumption." In some, perhaps many cases, it might even work. If you think about a "dockable tablet" or a one-pound notebook, you get the likely trajectory.


What Needs To Happen For Tablets To Replace Laptops?

Skype Founders Try a Video Startup, Again

Skype cofounders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis appear to be working on another video startup called Vdio. They launched a video site called Joost in 2006 that got no traction. 


Whether the new venture will succeed is an open question. What technologists often forget is that success in the video entertainment markets always hinges on access to the content consumers want to watch, and rarely on huge technology innovation. 


Technology can help, of course. Recommendation engines of the sort Amazon and Netflix have built are quite helpful in terms of the end user experience. But it all comes down to content access, and content owners are doing everything they can to make sure any new delivery channels create at least as much revenue as the legacy channels do. 

Skype Alums Building a Netflix Competitor