"Right-sourcing" or obtaining the correct balance between in-house activity and the purchase of external services

During the last few years, and more particularly to face the LHC construction, several Information Technology activities of the ST Division have been outsourced. This concerns various domains such as desktop support, application software development, system maintenance as well as turn-key control systems. Among other motivations, this tactical approach was seen as a way to achieve higher product quality and service rationalization. The outsourcing success of IT activities resides in the mastering of a complex process that includes amongst other specification, purchasing, negotiation, contract management skills on top of advanced technical knowledge. The perception of the success of outsourcing differs also from one stakeholder to another. Nowadays, as CERN encounters a cash-flow issue, in-sourcing is investigated as an alternative path for savings. From this experience and the survey of current practice in industry, this paper analyses various parameters that should be considered to find the correct balance between in-house activity and the purchase of external services.