Outsourcing Case

Outsourcing is when one organization agrees with another organization to provide services that may otherwise be accomplished by employees in-house. Frequently, tasks that are outsourced could be accomplished by the organization itself, but often there are financial gains that come from outsourcing. Organizations outsource for various reasons, but the most distinguished benefit appears to be the reality that it saves money. Organizations that offer outsourcing services does it a much lower rate, because they do not have to offer benefits to his or her employees and they have less overhead costs to be concerned about. The purpose of this paper is to identify the possible risks to an organization in a number of outsourcing situations.

Data Storage

Often organizations do not want to make the hardware and/or software it needs to operate his or her facility so outsourcing data storage and backups are ways for organizations to capitalize on technology benefits without the added costs. Data storage and backups are specialties of a large number of service providers; however, the organization in need of services should be aware of how the data will be used. The organizations should address the importance of data integrity, data availability and data recovery. In regard to data integrity, also known as data leakage, it must ensure that one organization’s information does not co-mingle with another organizations' information that the service provider is supporting. Even though the service provider may maintain several organizations’ information on the same storage server, each organization’s information should be separated across and/or isolated by the use of virtualization software.

In regard to data availability the provider needs to identify and prioritize the data availability requirements, for example, how fast primary data will be available and how long is the delay for secondary data considered acceptable. The cost of each level of availability is different due to its placement on the server. In regard to data back-up, a decision needs to be made between simple data backups, which only backs up the application data or a wider data back-up method, which backs up the applications themselves and the operating system. The regularity and location of the backups should be reviewed for compatibility with the business’ activities and physical security awareness.

Service Providers

Small business owners cannot afford or usually do not want to hire extra employees to provide non-core related services. Often non-core related jobs require one of two things less time than a full or part time position, or the job description is more of a seasonal project. In this case, outsourcing is the better options to save the organization time and money. The disadvantage to outsourcing infrastructure services is the risk of putting part of the company in someone else's