CSC World — December 2004 - February 2005

		Features
		Looking Forward, Looking Back Government Outsourcing: Making the Decision    Don Brown Governments at all levels are beginning to adopt IT outsourcing, but they are not yet accustomed to this contractual relationship. To get the most benefit from outsourcing, decision makers must be very clear about their management objectives, business case, and acquisition approach. Successful Integration: Fundamental to Outsourcing Success William C. Evans As IT outsourcing became a multibillion dollar industry, vendors and clients alike began to realize that integrating their businesses was critical to success.  A veteran of many transitions tells how to do it right. Changing Business by Changing Business Processes      Ronald Brown There is nothing static about business processes, so they cannot be captured forever in lines of code. Attempts to do just that not only fail to get processes under IT control but also hinder business control. Fortunately, technology now can increase both kinds of control. Designing Your Business     Derek Binney & James Dee Many companies don’t need management consultants to devise new business strategies.  They already have strategies. What they need to know are which of their business processes are most important to that strategy, which aren't, and what to do about it. From Tech Hype to Business Reality     Russ Owen & Terry Boyd The key to turning a technology into a utility is standards.  We are five to ten years away from the standards that will allow different platforms to work together smoothly. Computing may not be a utility yet, but we do have the technology to make it look like a utility. The Route to a Process-Enabled Supply Chain     Ian Walker Without understanding end-to-end product flows, no company can hope to extract real business value from them.The first step to understanding those product flows is to map them. On Contriving Machinery    Charles Babbage The inventor of the difference engine provides timeless thinking about the business applications of technology.

		Departments
		First Hand Everyone talks about innovation, but turning creative inventions into workable innovations continues to be one of the most difficult challenges facing business.  To get some insight into this subject, we went to John Seely Brown, who has seen first-hand how innovation has—and famously hasn't—happened. Findings Robert Scudamore & Fletcher Kurtz Grid computing is an emerging technology with enormous potential for business as well as scientific research. Our authors sort out the various definitions of this new technology and explain the engineering challenges it presents.		Research News: Notes on recent research Book Review     Paul B. Brown In Business Process Management: The third Wave, Howard Smith and Peter Fingar say that every company's real product is not the product itself, but the processes for creating it. This contention puts the authors smack in the middle of one of the hottest ideas today, the latest iteration of business process management.

Download the PDF version of CSC World (3.3 MB), CSC's thought leadership magazine.
E-mail questions or comments to world@csc.com.
Learn more about the CSC World contributors.