Peoples are realizing that outsourcing really means best practice. And clients are now trying to build strategic frameworks and position themselves for core business and how are they going to align strategic goals and capabilities to grow and leverage the top line. The clients’ interest in driving costs out -almost under any circumstance -has shifted to a focus on productivity. Now there is a big trend of clients looking at the total impact to operations.

Clients, as always, are still concerned about availability for their infrastructure and applications and the need to ensure end users or customers get what they need to run the business. They also ask what outsourcing providers can do to make sure systems are so predictable that availability never becomes an issue. Clients now require that suppliers proactively introduce recommendations and suggestions on process improvements that will improve overall productivity. It's no longer good enough to be an operational outsourcer who just responds; suppliers need to be an integral part of the entire process.

With multisourcing, the client gets best-of-breed solutions that are integrated and synergistic. It may also require a single reporting environment, where each provider must be willing to submit reports that look like they are all a single entity. The key in the future will center around bringing into an outsourcing relationship the right level of innovation in infrastructure and business processes, upon which companies will compete.

Determining the value proposition of an outsourcing arrangement will be focused on total cost of ownership and how to get more value from the investments in IT. Outsourcing is now an imperative for success in enterprises. At the same time, we're facing an ever-changing world in IT. The Rx for the challenge is to choose an outsourcing provider that can take the buyer's business to tomorrow.