It's all about trust. Customer-supplier relationships in the cloud computing world

Session Date & Time: Day 1, March 23, 9:00am EST (6:00pm PST) (1hr)
Keywords: Outsourcing, Risk, Contractual Lock-in, Supplier relationships, Strategy, Integration.
Authors: Graham Beck, Senior Shared Services and Outsourcing Specialist at PA Consulting Group and Mark Britton, Senior IT Systems Architect at PA Consulting Group.
Abstract: Many companies have adopted a 'partnering' approach to outsourcing their IT requirements in the past. Supplier and customer work alongside each other, and the supplier invests in understanding their customer’s business in order to tailor their solution to best meet their needs. How will this model have to change to take advantage of cloud services? A partnership style of relationship might appeal if only to allay some of the fears about data security and lock-in often seen as barriers to moving services into the cloud. But, is such a model feasible or even necessary in a low-cost commoditised service environment?
Through this session the participants will learn:
The changing relationship dynamics: As of today, would a major company really trust a supplier to provide critical parts of their IT business systems if the relationship was based on no more than a web site and a helpline?
What this means for suppliers of cloud services: Can you still get the benefits promised by cloud computing if you need to invest in maintaining a personal relationship with each of your customers? Can you provide relationship type services, like integrating with customer’s legacy systems, alongside or on top of commoditised services?
What this means for companies: This talk sets out why that is ultimately unlikely and unnecessary, and why we will all need to move to having a more promiscuous relationship with suppliers - but not just yet.
Learnings: By combining our deep experience in Sourcing, business operations and people and organisational change we are able to bring a breadth of insight to participants in a Cloud environment. Our experience tells us that taking a broader view of the changing technical landscape and the implications on supply relationships, together with the future needs of the retained IT capability means organisations are better able to sustain value and deliver benefits.
With no exclusive alliances with third parties or service providers PA Consulting can focus the insight in the session purely based on the best interest of the participants.

Graham Beck, Senior Shared Services and Outsourcing Specialist at PA Consulting Group
Graham has over 25 year’s managerial experience in the IT Services sector, He has delivered, marketed, sold, designed and procured outsourcing services from both a client and supplier perspective. As one of PA’s leading outsourcing advisors, he has procured and delivered complex outsourcing services with client valued between £70 million and £1.2 billion. Having successfully managed IT service delivery organisations enables him to advise on the design and capability requirements of IT functions for either in-house or outsourced delivery models.

Mark Britton, Senior IT Systems Architect at PA Consulting Group.
Mark Britton is one of PA's most experienced IT system architects. He has worked extensively in both central government and the private sector in a wide range of roles, including: devising enterprise and system architectures; engineering and integration of complex IT systems; review and recovery of IT implementations programmes that are in difficulty; and EU ICT procurements. He also acts as an expert on IT in litigation and other dispute resolution procedures.