Going to market together

Important as the partnership model was for smoothing the transition and overcoming the organizational and technical hurdles to offshoring, this model was crucial to the success of Sun’s additional outsourcing objective: increasing its revenue by designing and implementing joint go-to-market initiatives.

These initiatives have been successful because the Sun-CSC partnership was based on compatible cultures and complementary core competencies. Both companies come from technology and engineering roots, and their cultures are similar in many respects. They do have different business models: Sun had focused more on market-leading technology and products than on services and integration aspects, while CSC had focused more on program management, system integration and business results. But their respective core competencies are complementary, and CSC and Sun work to leverage them to enhance the cooperative and collaborative nature of the relationship.

The partners came together to build a flexible evaluation approach to constantly assess and test ideas for new go-to-market initiatives. Open discussion required an evaluation of each other’s capabilities, commitment to success and the limitations of time and other resources. Together the teams have developed a framework allowing them to rapidly move initiatives from idea generation through exploration to market launch. To date, these efforts have identified tens of millions of dollars in opportunities for Sun through CSC contracts with commercial clients and government agencies.

Making it all work

Within 18 months of contract start, CSC had delivered savings to Sun of 22 percent and is on track to deliver even more savings over the life of the agreement. CSC IT staff maintained serv¬ice levels during the transition and offshoring period despite the highly compressed schedule. They have also delivered service level improvements, such as a substantial reduction in tickets submitted and an even more substantial reduction in the ticket backlog. These financial and service delivery  uccesses were made possible by the commitment of SunIT and CSC IT staff to help each other in every kind of situation.

The relationship between Sun and CSC has evolved from CSC being a service provider to being a product consumer to Sun and CSC jointly developing new market opportunities. The evolution from merely being consumers of each other’s technology to one where the companies jointly define and pursue new market opportunities has strengthened the ties between the firms on multiple levels. Sun has gained valuable insight into how best to leverage a global systems integrator as a market maker, and CSC has gained valuable insight into the application of technologies still in development to solve real client problems.

Being able to influence product development has provided a unique opportunity for both companies. Sun can focus its resources on filling known market needs, and CSC can advise its clients on technology initiatives, providing Sun early market feedback into direction and strategy while the development process is still in play. This reduces the time to market and increases the probability of market success with “customer” feedback before the product even reaches the market.

Innovation creates new opportunities

Examples of initiatives that Sun and CSC are currently developing include advanced identity manage¬ment solutions that are being marketed to potential customers such as U.S. federal agencies and health¬care providers. The partners are also exploring new opportunities in virtualization, rapid application upgrade capabilities and other ventures that leverage each other’s unique competencies. Building upon each other’s specialized industry focus, Sun and CSC have also launched a number of financial services initiatives.

This year, Sun has extended the relationship by awarding CSC a multi-year contract for support of its Integrated Business Information Solution initiative. The new contract includes support of Sun’s internal financial, manufacturing and supply chain applications. As part of this agreement, CSC is supporting Sun’s largest ever systems development project, a deploy¬ment of the company’s business applications to the Oracle 11i platform.

In addition, Sun and CSC are both working on vari¬ous “Green IT” initiatives designed to help companies improve the environment and reduce energy costs. Sun recently introduced a new Eco Innovation Initiative that offers customers environmentally friendly solutions such as more energy-efficient data centers. CSC’s Leading Edge Forum included Sun’s headquarters in its annual Executive Program Study Tour to see firsthand how the company has saved money through environmentally sound measures.

Sun’s customers are getting more value out of their data centers by taking advantage of the virtualization capabilities of the Solaris 10 Operating System. In addi¬tion, Sun products such as the highly anticipated Project Blackbox virtual data center and the Java Composite Application Platform Suite (JCAPS) are creating a renewed buzz in the marketplace. With CSC’s help, Sun continues to solidify its reputation as one of the tech industry’s leading innovators.

Jim Battey is a senior writer for CSC’s corporate office.

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