Let us analyse the three levels of Information Outsourcing : Facility, Management and Information.

1. Facility Outsourcing comprises servers, network access, operating system and the application platform which together form the backbone infrastructure of the corporate information system.
2. Management Outsourcing comprises activities performed by skilled staff to design, configure, customise, monitor, maintain or support facilities in relation with management goals.
3. Information Outsourcing comprises activities related to producing or processing of the information managed through facilities.

Each level may relate to one ore more information segments in a company :

1. Resources: this segment consists of quantitative information assets and transaction processes. It typically the the segment of ERP and CRM.
2. Knowledge: this segment consists of qualitative information assets. It is typically the segment of KM and ECM.
3. Communication: this segment consists of information routing. It is typically the segment of messaging, conferencing, webmeeting and VOIP.

Because services are provided to multiple users, it is also useful to distinguish:

• separable services which can be operated by any number of providers without losing any benefit
• whole services: which can not be operated by any number of providers without losing any benefit

In the of facility outsoucing, it is also useful to make a difference between:

• hardware: servers, laptops
• network: Internet access, housing, hosting
• operating environment: operating system, computer language, database, application server
• application platform: application framework for ERP, CRM, KM, groupware, etc.

References