In the past decade all major IT service providers—as well as most midsized and some small players—have invested significantly in offshore delivery capacity, most notably in India. Globalization in general and offshore outsourcing specifically have matured and even though the economic downturn has slowed discretionary spending and investments, the offshore outsourcing business is still growing.

The transition of IT services is an integral part of IT outsourcing. The transition aims to transfer the contracted services to the new supplier. After the transition, the new supplier should have taken over the IT services in such a way that it can provide the correct services on time, in accordance with specifications and at the agreed upon cost.

“Traditionally, IT is seen as a cost of doing business with a very limited link from IT activities to business outcomes. In order to prove the link and therefore the value, we need to use performance indicators (often referred to as Key Performance Indicators or KPIs) as measure and proof for both the link and the added value. In this article, IT includes the IT assets and the application and infrastructure management activities to build, maintain and provide IT functions to end users.”

The IT organization is required to be customer-oriented and at the same time flexible and efficient as well as being able to deliver new systems quickly and at low cost. These new systems have to be implemented trouble-free within a stable infrastructure. In fact rather a lot to ask from one single organization. In a relatively immature environment where the customer’s wishes and the available technology are constantly changing, everything is becoming increasingly more complex.