Some thoughts on Google’s general approach to Social Media (including webmail) from The Atlantic here.

Peter

Good to hear from you and thanks for the comments :-).

I hope that you are well, how is Japan treating you?

All the best

Peter

“Foolish and short-sighted” seems to be a popular business model. Or I’m becoming curmudgeonly. Thank you, Google, for stealing my idealism and hope for humanity. (Not really.)

~Christine

Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment.

As I say, what might be termed the programming resource is the only element that I would consider outsourcing. For mid-sized companies, this is likely to be of a size where the economies of scale are outweighed by the risks, lengthened communication lines and lack of flexibility (understandably) inherent in many outsourcing contracts.

Out of interest, what is your own role? It always hels to get disclosure on these matters, lest other readers infer a conflict of interest.

All the best

Peter

My experience is somewhat different.

There is business and technical aspect of BI. Both aspects are important. Depending on what data sources are used, you can have a business /information analyst which delivers specifications which an external consultant can use to design a data warehouse and ETL. Those activities can en should be outsourced, I believe. There is no way an internal developer can match the skill level and experience of a consultant who have seen a lot of data warehouses in different companies. Learning “hard” technical skills cost time and money. This is an argument which managers understand.

Even iterative development which often comes at a later stadium when reports of OLAP-cubes have to be build, can be done by an external experienced BI-consultant. He has done it many times before, after all.

Tigor

Peter

Thanks for taking the time to comment. If I have it right you are asking about bringing an outsourced BI function back in house – do I have that right?

I guess new projects vs business as usual might be somewhat related to how the outsourced systems are perceived. I’m guessing that if they were great, then keeping them outsourced would make sense as it had delivered, so perhaps the question would not arise. Am I right in assuming that this path has been less than successful?

Peter