The outsourcing trend of the past two decades has forever transformed the IT functions at most multi-billion dol- lar companies. Today, executives are fine tuning the mix—a little vendor consolidation here, bringing back a few key call center functions, changing out a vendor there—but nobody expects any of these giant organizations to reassemble large internal teams of IT employees.

1. An OcuCue™ white paper.
Reassembling the Post-outsourcing IT Puzzle Pieces
(a/k/a A Single Pane of Glass for All)
Stuart Woodward | Manager
scwoodward@OcuCue.com
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2. REASSEMBLING THE POST-OUTSOURCING IT PUZZLE PIECES An OcuCue™ white paper.
The outsourcing trend of the past two decades has forever transformed the IT functions at most multi-billion dol-
lar companies. Today, executives are fine tuning the mix—a little vendor consolidation here, bringing back a few
key call center functions, changing out a vendor there—but nobody expects any of these giant organizations to
reassemble large internal teams of IT employees.
Outsourcing is here to stay.
Early on it appeared that a few large players might be able to capture entire IT departments under a single con-
tract. However, as the outsourcing revolution has played out it is more common that a handful of large players
have carved up the IT infrastructure at most customers based on their key areas of expertise. True, some of these
giant providers live in tiered subcontractor relationships. But increasingly the world’s largest organizations rely on
A picture is worth a thousand words. more than a few key vendors to deliver their IT infrastructure.
Pictures that update themselves are The business leaders of these global behemoth customers face three converging conditions as they
survey their respective operations:
worth even more.
1. The outsourcing vendors they have chosen and come to rely upon may be as big or even bigger
than they are, e.g., Accenture, AT&T, IBM, Orange.
2. While the company’s IT executive may be a single point of contact internally, he or she no longer is
directly connected to the people doing the work. And in most instances, the workers do not work
for or report to a single entity.
3. Senior IT executives as well as the executive leaders of the organization are thirsty for better IT
information to run the business. As the internet cloud has expanded to incorporate more economic
interactions, the critical role of IT in every aspect of the organization means that each department
inside needs better information.
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3. REASSEMBLING THE POST-OUTSOURCING IT PUZZLE PIECES An OcuCue™ white paper.
So this convergence of (1) big, (2) fragmented points of contact, and (3) lack of timely and comprehensive in-
formation hampers the competitiveness of most global organizations. It sounds silly or even childish, but a lot
of finger pointing goes on among these giant IT outsourcing vendors that is not productive or responsive to the
questions coming from their global customers.
Data Is Not the Issue
All of these organizations already have come through the data revolution. They collect, categorize, “warehouse”,
analyze and serve up massive amounts of data. To help, in recent years the large Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) providers, such as Oracle and SAP, have pulled the data together under one roof. Unfortunately, the three
forces discussed above are pulling in the opposite direction.
The visual sense has the highest
But let’s be clear that the data do exist in various systems and the customer is paying the bill for each compo-
bandwidth of the human senses. nent, probably across a suite of vendors.
Greater than 100MB/second. Data Analytics
An additional comment about those ERP global solutions is in order. As Oracle, SAP and others came to market
– Georgia Tech there was a trend in data analytics that served up the dashboard concept as a holy grail. At the time it was a hot
trend and widely adopted. In essence, the dashboard amalgamated (averaged) the data into a few key factors
and drove the user to click down through multiple layers of detail if he or she was thirsty for more.
The dashboard served up fresh data (good) that was comprehensive in computation (good) but not individually
comprehensible or intuitively presented (not so good). Rest assured that the detail was available, but in a silo ar-
rangement that allowed the user progressively to learn more — one click at a time.
These ERP systems with the clickable silos also established the expectation that every top-level view had to be
connected in detail to all of the levels of data supporting that view. This recalls the adage that “The devil is in the
details.” And finding the details takes extra effort.
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4. REASSEMBLING THE POST-OUTSOURCING IT PUZZLE PIECES An OcuCue™ white paper.
At OcuCue, we have updated this adage to get to the heart of the issue:
The devil is in the details…
…so is most of the value.
If you see the truth in our literary extension, then more of this good detail needs to be moved up and included in
the top line view.
The Visual Analytics Revolution
So, how can senior executives access and use a more detailed view? Recent advancements in visual analytics
The devil is in the details... reveals how. Three factors have converged to offer relief. The first reality is biological, the second techno-
logical and the last behavioral.
...so is most of the value.
1. Recent research documents that of all the human senses, sight has the greatest processing
bandwidth. The human eye, ocular nerve and brain can visually process 100 megabits of information
every second.
2. The CGI revolution that began with dramatic special effects in very expensive movies has trickled
down to make detailed visual icons much easier and more economical to assemble on the fly.
3. Pictures, or icons, can contain a significant amount of information that fosters a more detailed
understanding of current conditions. (“A picture is worth a thousand words.”) When properly
constructed the visual elements can be intuitive to understand (no training) and communicate
across cultures (red is “bad” and green is “good”).
So now it is time to return to the IT department. If the IT functions have been outsourced to several large, some-
what uncooperative (especially with one another) vendors, how can we put these puzzle pieces back together to
have a unified view? (Known in the IT space as “a single pane of glass.”)
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5. REASSEMBLING THE POST-OUTSOURCING IT PUZZLE PIECES An OcuCue™ white paper.
Icons constructed along visual analytics principles are a good starting point. The company executives—IT lead-
ership as well as the general management team—are thirsty for coordinated data and now that is possible. When
designed properly with visual limitations in mind, humans can process and comprehend incredible volumes of
information. If we keep the symbols easy to understand and arranged in certain defined ways, the icons are
intuitive to understand. This means that non-technical types can now understand and comprehend the results of
technical conditions. And it is possible to convey more detail in the shared icons.
Visual icons can put an end to finger pointing among an organization’s outsourcing vendors. Everyone can see
and understand what the issues are, where they are, and what part of the process is not working. At that point,
all of the energy can go into the proper team addressing the targeted issue.
Finally, you can get detailed visual
At this point we should address the data issue. Where does the data to construct the icons come from?
cues that reflect current conditions in
Traditional models would suggest a huge data integration effort among the outsourcers to create a single view.
Think of this approach as trying to coordinate the various systems at the top of the flowchart with new code and
a custom format.
massive amounts of data. Issues of proprietary information, confidentiality, cooperation and sheer integration
make this approach a long and difficult task among vendors.
The new Visual Cue Technology approach pulls limited amounts of data from each of the vendors and their
variety of databases. Remember, we are trying to gain a more detailed insight, paint a better picture. We are not
trying to assemble a clickable silo of uber data. We need just enough data to convey current conditions (every
30 seconds) but not enough to solve the entire problem. One way to think about this data is to imagine simply
polling a small amount of data out of the bottom on each vendor’s database (at the bottom of the flowchart).
These data are copies of existing system data (still very fresh), but as copies they do not interfere with process-
ing streams, data retention policies, and are small quantities. These select data from each source are run through
algorithms customized for each application, fed to the icon generator and then are available for viewing by the
users on the Visual Cue portal.
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6. REASSEMBLING THE POST-OUTSOURCING IT PUZZLE PIECES An OcuCue™ white paper.
By using a portal approach, the organization can authorize many different people to see the icons. They can be
viewed in the NOC, by each outsourcing vendor, by operations people in the company’s regional offices (the
view restricted to each region’s icons), by executives, and others who need this up-to-the-minute, detailed, intui-
tive view to perform their jobs.
Reassembling the Puzzle Pieces
Today, large organizations have outsourced many of their IT functions. In the process, they have given up the
unified view they once had. Using icons from Visual Cue Technologies is a way to restore a unified view and
improve the effectiveness of the view presented, to be understood by IT professionals as well as less-technically
inclined personnel—the senior leaders of the organization as well as those employees on the front lines interfac-
ing with customers.
To learn more about Visual Cue
Technologies’ solutions for the IP
networking arena, visit www.ocucue.com
or call (888) 9-OcuCue.
OcuCue Technologies
1165 19th Street
Vero Beach, FL 32960
(888) 9-OcuCue | (772) 410-2100
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