Category: General IT Services

My Bad (blog and blogging habits)

I received a nudge from a reader I respect who suggested I need to post more regularly to be taken seriously. 

“To be perceived as a blogger with time sensitive market insights, you need to have more frequent postings .”

Ouch.  The good news and bad news about blogging is unlike old school print magazine column-writing, you can see in real time how many people are reading your blog, where they’re coming from, what they searched to find you, and of course, who’s commenting and the quality of the comments. 

The A-list tech bloggers are doing a phenomenal job beating some of the major media to the punch with major developments.  There’s even a bit of a sea change going on in the analyst world with leading independent bloggers usurping the stranglehold on influence that the leading industry analyst firms have always wielded.  See this story in InformationWeek. 

When I told a friend I had all but abandonned the blog of late, he recoiled,

“Abandoned the services market– no way!  There’s too much action there!”

Personally, I don’t know how the A-list bloggers do it.  Take one of my favorite bloggers, Rod Boothby, who happens to also be a senior guy at E&Y.  I’m interviewing Boothby for a story I’m doing right now for GITS, and he told me he’ll be wrapped up with a client all next week.  So in addition to some sophisticated management consulting day-job work, he’ll squeeze in my interview (and I’m probably one of many), keep up with everything else going on in the blogosphere, and keep posting terrific content on his blog.  It’s superhuman. 

Until I learn how to manage my time better, I’ve opted to accept an offer to VLOG– a video blog with a large outsourcing community.  Details are coming.  I’ll keep you posted.  In the VLOG, I’ll be reporting on news, trends, adds/moves/changes in the outsourcing market, some rumors and general musings. 

Keane settles

I issued a press release this week, so I've been a little busy catching up with old contacts.  I saw this today on InformationWeek's outsourcing newsletter.  Keane settled with Georgina Fisk, the firm's VP of Marketing for $1.4M on alleged charges of sexual harassment.  This is a huge victory for victims of sexual harassment.  And so fast…!  Keane's board ought to be commended. 

Don’t count out the Big Guys…

A press release issued today from my old friends at EDS caught my eye. EDS announced the company built a secure, web-based portal for its long-time outsourcing customer, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA). According to the release, EDS integrated several of BCBSMA's internal systems in order to provide convenient and simple access to a host of administrative information and provider processes to BCBSMA's network of 35,000 physicians and healthcare providers.

I was just talking yesterday to Larry Bissinger who leads analyst relations for EDS, making the point that veteran IT Services players and outsourcers are in an enviable position to bring next generation technology to the best customers. Take the BCBSMA relationship for EDS. I remember a DATAMATION column I wrote in June of 1994 where employees who were outsourced to EDS sued BC/BS and received $9M in a class action law suit. It was a landmark case at the time. EDS and BCBSMA survived all the spectacle and strain that must have put on their relationship, and the relationship has been renewed and extended a few times since the first deal-signing. Joe Fraser, the EDS client delivery executive, has been there for 15 years. With those roots, it's logical that BCBSMA would turn to EDS first when they want to investigate technology improvements. Granted, some of the improvements are already in scope of their existing agreements, but EDS is more than the sum of its contract parts. My point here is, we should expect to see innovation and business model reinvention coming from old, familiar places. Not everyone will abandon their preferred vendors for the "hot shop."

Trust, Communications, Relationship-management…

Frank Casale invited me to co-moderate a workshop yesterday at his Outsourcing Institute NYC Roadshow on "Outsourcing's Bad Rap: Playing Politics." Throughout the day, although the outsourcing market has changed so much over the past ten years, I heard the recurring themes of trust, communications, and old-fashioned relationship management. Buyers and sellers all have their war stories.

The day was excellent. A comfortable and informative series of workshops and presentations. OI holds a series of these workshops. If you're interested in outsourcing, definitely worth attending.

Yep. Sexual Harrassment. Mother's Day special. Read the Globe for the scoop. Incidentally, there were some unsavory comments on the Yahoo Financial Bulletin Board reporting eye witness accounts of Brian Keane's behavior at a recent company event. Regardless, the Keane board elected to remove him after considering all the evidence and allegations. For women everywhere who have been victims of real sexual harrassment, I hope this is a victory.

For the record: I was sexually harassed as a young woman in my early career at EDS. As a young professional woman, not wanting to jeopardize my future, I only talked about it to my peers. Enough women had a problem with this particular manager, and to EDS' management's credit, the manager was fired within the year. And this was in the 80s before litigation was so crippling….

Whoops. Nothing like News to Get You Writing Again…

I've read that the problem with blogs is they're hard to maintain unless you're a hardcore blogger. I've been busy these past few weeks, researching a story I'm writing on the Interactive Agency/Web Integrator space. But the big news today is that Brian Keane suddenly resigned as CEO of Keane today amid allegations of "personal misconduct" that the board must have found somewhat serious. You can read the story at today's Boston Globe. I didn't have a lot of time to chase this one down, but the analysts and friends I have in New England mostly speculated it must be sexual harassment. I'm sure the story will come out in the next few days. Keane's a conservative company. C'est dommage. I don't know the Keane brothers. I remember John Keane, the founder, from ITAA. Nice guy. Sheesh– kids.