SMEs save with IT outsourcing

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) could thrive by keeping their costs to a minimum, an expert has asserted, highlighting the benefits of IT outsourcing, says ihotdesk.

Julie Meyer, star of BBC's Dragons' Den Online, claims the current market conditions are restricting the amount of expensive technology that companies can buy, which could see more firms moving these functions to external providers.

She says many entrepreneurs need to set up their businesses using their own money and must exercise discipline in keeping costs to an absolute minimum.

Telecoms infrastructure maker Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has won its largest outsourcing deal in Africa to date, taking on 350 staff from Kuwait operator Zain, reports Guardian.co.uk.

Nokia Siemens said the five-year deal would see it optimise, modernise and manage equipment in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, where Zain has over nine million customers. It will also replace some of the operator's existing, non-NSN gear with its own.

"This contract marks Nokia Siemens Networks' biggest multi-vendor outsourcing case in the region and it's one of the first supplier swap ... deals of its kind in Africa," NSN said in a statement.

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has taken the major step of outsourcing its presence on the Internet, according to PRMinds. It believes it is the first higher education establishment in the UK to use an external provider to host its institutional Web site.

Traditionally, universities have tended to keep their Web site in-house, but with LSE implementing a new content management system and introducing an improved Web site; it decided it was necessary to work with a specialist managed hosting partner to guarantee the availability of its online presence.

iomart Hosting, which owns and operates its own resilient network of five UK data centres, co-designed, built, and maintains a hardware platform that supports LSE's Web site on fully secure servers located away from LSE's London campus.