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Terminate the IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Relationship

There must be 50 ways to leave your vendor.

  • Moving your IT infrastructure can be a tricky process, especially for critical infrastructure with stringent availability requirements.
  • The high switching costs in most contracts make it not only more expensive to switch, but also more difficult to find a new vendor.
  • Many organizations continue to experience the same pains even after they’ve switched vendors because the vendor isn’t always the cause of the problem.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  1. Don’t switch providers unless there is no way to rehabilitate the current agreement and relationship. Switching is expensive, and the vendor is often not the problem.
  2. The only thing that’s certain in IT is failure. Embrace this and focus on helping your provider continuously improve its mean time to respond and mean time to repair.
  3. Moving your data center is a large project that involves two steps. Moving infrastructure into the new vendor’s site, and moving infrastructure out of the current site.

Impact and Result

  • Identify the root cause of your outsourcing problems to make sure that switching providers isn’t just a temporary fix.
  • Re-assess your outsourcing strategy to make sure that your outsourcing requirements and selected deployment model are still suitable for your business.
  • Carefully make the financial and non-financial case for switching vendors and rehabilitating the relationship.
  • Implement good project management practices when implementing the move to minimize the risks involved and maintain uptime of critical infrastructure.

Terminate the IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Relationship Research & Tools

1. Diagnose the organization’s outsourcing problems

Address issues in the action plan.

Storyboard: Terminate the IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Relationship

2. Validate the outsourcing strategy

Make sure that the strategy is still appropriate for the organization.

In-House IT Infrastructure Costing Tool

3. Make the case and structure the project

Determine the best course of action and organize the project.

Terminate the Outsourcing Agreement Detailed Business Case
Terminate the Outsourcing Agreement Business Case Summary

4. Develop a plan to stay with the provider

Rehabilitate and improve the current relationship and performance.

5. Select a new provider

Partner with a good provider that can meet organizational requirements.

Infrastructure Outsourcing Request for Proposal Template
Infrastructure Outsourcing RFP Scoring Tool
Data Center Co-location Site Visit and Evaluation Checklist

6. Develop a plan and execute the move

Move to the new vendor’s facility while minimizing risk and downtime.

Data Center Relocation Project Planning and Monitoring Tool

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Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Varian Medical Systems, Inc.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$6,366

2

Workshop: Terminate the IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Relationship

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Diagnose the Problem

The Purpose

  • Identify the reasons for terminating your relationship.
  • Diagnose the problems underlying your dissatisfaction with the current agreement.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Identified problems causing grief in the outsourcing relationship.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Identify problems underlying the dissatisfaction with your current agreement

  • Reasons behind outsourcing problems

Module 2: Validate the Outsourcing Strategy

The Purpose

  • Re-assess the outsourcing strategy to ensure that it is still appropriate for the organization.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • A cost effective outsourcing strategy that is a good strategic fit with the organization.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Re-assess outsourced infrastructure components

  • Validated outsourced components
2.2

Re-evaluate your short-term and long-term requirements

  • Validated short-term and long-term requirements
2.3

Validate your selected deployment model

  • Validated deployment model

Module 3: Make the Case and Structure the Project

The Purpose

  • Select the best course of action based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis.
  • Structure the project to maximize success.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Carefully evaluated options resulting in the best selected course of action.
  • Structured project to maximize project success.  

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Make the qualitative and financial case for each option

3.2

Make the go/no-go decision

  • Selected course of action
3.3

Develop the business case

  • Completed business case

Module 4: Develop a Plan to Stay With the Provider

The Purpose

  • Develop a plan to rehabilitate or renegotiate your current agreement.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Plan to rehabilitate or re-negotiate with the vendor to address potential root problems such as lack of vendor management.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Develop a rehabilitation plan

4.2

Develop vendor management capabilities and a collaborative partnership

4.3

Re-negotiate your contract

  • Rehabilitation and re-negotiation plan

Module 5: Select a New Provider

The Purpose

  • Select the most suitable provider for the organization’s needs.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Suitable provider that can meet both current and future requirements selected.

Activities

Outputs

5.1

Design your RFP

  • RFP
5.2

Score your RFP responses

  • RFP scoring tool
5.3

Steps to take before selecting a new provider

5.4

Review the SLAs and contract

  • Selected provider

Module 6: Develop a Plan and Execute the Move

The Purpose

  • Develop an action plan that will minimize risks and maintain business uptime requirements.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • A moving plan will minimize risks and maintain business uptime requirements.

Activities

Outputs

6.1

Examine moving strategies and develop a transition plan

  • Project action plan and monitoring tool
6.2

Notify the incumbent

6.3

Measure project success

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About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

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Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 1-phase advisory process. You'll receive 4 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

  • Call 1: Diagnose the problem and validate your outsourcing strategy

    Call A: Differentiate the symptoms of your problems from the causes to develop a plan to overcome them.

    Call B: Validate your outsourcing strategy by examining your requirements and the alignment of your deployment model selection with costs and strategic fit.

  • Call 2: Decide whether to leave the vendor and structure the project

    Call A: Assess your options and decide whether to leave the vendor.

    Call B: Review your success metrics and business case.

  • Call 3: Develop a rehabilitation and renegotiation plan

    Call A: Develop a plan to either rehabilitate your vendor relationship or re-negotiate your contract.

  • Call 4: Select a new provider and plan for the transition

    Call A: Review your RFP.

    Call B: Review your top vendor responses, pricing, contracts, service level agreements.

    Call C: Review your transition plan.

    Call D: Evaluate project success.

Authors

Darin Stahl

Margaret Hao

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