Posted
By

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering whether to make fundamental changes to how carriers (and ultimately their customers) pay for federal programs that provide greater access to telecommunications and Internet services. The dilemma facing the FCC is that Universal Service Fund (USF) program expenses are increasing, while interstate and international telecommunications revenues, the source of the funding, are on the decline. Facing a carrier contribution rate that is now 17.4 percent – a hefty rate in any economy – the FCC is looking at alternatives to revenues, including assessments based on telephone numbers or network connections.

No one disputes the laudable goals of USF. These include funding for: a) carriers who provide free or low cost telecommunications services to the poor; b) high cost telephone companies so that customers in rural and remote areas can access telecommunications at rates similar to customers in the cities; c) schools and libraries to get discounted rates for essential telecommunications services; and d) telecommunications services for rural health care providers. In 1998, these programs cost about $3.9 billion. In 2012 the cost will be more than $9.5 billion. The FCC has taken steps recently to cap or slow the growth of these programs, and put in place rules and regulations to reduce fraud, waste and abuse.

The growth on the expense side has put added pressure on the revenue side – all of which comes from carriers providing interstate and international telecommunications and VoIP services. As a result of the declining cost of telecommunications services combined with reduced demand because of email and free voice services, there has been a reduction in assessable revenues from 1998 to 2012, from $80 billion to about $66 billion. Accordingly, the contribution factor has risen from 3.19 percent in 1998 to 17.4 percent today. The FCC adjusts the contribution factor quarterly.

Continue reading

Posted
By

I recently attended the UK Society for Computers and Law’s Annual Conference where Cloud Computing was one of the ‘IT Law Hot Topics’ under discussion. The others, in case you are interested, were Big Data, Apps and Mobile Payments. The event was sold out which goes to show how ‘hot’ these topics really are!

One of the speakers was Christopher Millard, Professor of Privacy and Information Law at Queen Mary, University of London where he leads the Cloud Legal Project – a three-year Microsoft funded academic project undertaken by the Queen Mary Centre for Commercial Law Studies. Started in October 2009, its mission is to reduce uncertainty regarding legal and regulatory status of essential aspects of cloud computing by “the production and dissemination of a series of scholarly yet practical research papers to address various legal and regulatory issues that will be fundamental to the successful development of cloud computing… [which will] demonstrate thought leadership in several complex and difficult areas of law and regulation that are of vital importance to governments and businesses globally.”

The Cloud Legal Project website contains a rich source of content and is recommended reading for IT law practitioners whether in house or in private practice. Topics covered include an analysis of Cloud service provider’s standard legal terms; data protection issues in cloud computing; law enforcement access in a cloud environment; and the role of competition law in the cloud; as well as a report on some of the differing legal issues in cloud computing as compared with conventional outsourcing or hosting contracts.

Continue reading

Posted
By

Sitting in the Northeast, our news has been dominated by only two stories for the last week–Hurricane Sandy and the Presidential Election. Both events have far reaching impacts on this country and its citizens, and both have (or could have) significant impacts on our industry.

Sandy . . .

Hurricane Sandy tested disaster recovery (DR) plans and operations. With outages in power and internet, and flooding of operations creating multiple points of failure, redundancy plans were pushed to the brink. Transportation options significantly limited in the hardest hit areas even where technology was available and workers were often unable to get to a viable work site. While some companies were able to swing operations to backup locations seamlessly, some had primary and secondary outages that prevented such successful recovery operations.

Continue reading

Posted
By

There has been much brouhaha throughout the 2012 presidential debates about the loss of American jobs through outsourcing to lower-cost countries. China has been portrayed as the evil nation stealing jobs and intellectual property, and violating trade rules. However, outsourcing doesn’t necessarily mean the loss of jobs to other countries. It can simply be movement between US-based organizations.

There are numerous US-based outsourcers in all sectors of the industry: IBM, HP and Xerox are brands that the population recognizes as home grown IT providers; Aon Hewitt, Mercer and Fidelity are local entities that provide HR outsourcing; and Fiserv, Accenture, and Total System Services provide outsourcing services to the Financial industry, just to name a few.

In deciding to outsource a function or service, companies look at various considerations including cost reduction, service improvement and the ability to focus attention and resources on core lines of business. Using an offshore provider certainly provides a greater cost advantage, but the chances are that onshore service providers can also perform a function more cheaply than you are currently doing it in-house. Onshore service providers can generally provide service at a lower cost due to a number of factors:

Continue reading

Posted
By

In negotiating outsourcing agreements, I sit on both sides of the table – obviously not at the same time. I represent customers about half of my time, and I spend the rest of the time representing suppliers.

It’s always interesting seeing a transaction from one particular viewpoint, but also knowing the dynamics that are at play for the other side. One thing that strikes me is that, regardless which side of the table I am on, my clients always think that they have little or no leverage, and that the other party in the negotiation holds all the bargaining power.

The customer sees itself pitted against a team of professionals who negotiate outsourcing agreements day in and day out, whereas the customer might have an agreement (or a handful of agreements) that is up for replacement or renegotiation every few years. They may be under time pressure to get the transaction executed, either to meet internal deadlines, to implement new technology, or to give termination notice to an existing supplier.

Continue reading

Posted
By

As noted in our previous blog posting on the subject, the most prevalent model for pricing applications outsourcing services involves the following components:

(1) a fixed monthly charge for applications maintenance;

(2) a fixed monthly charge for a baseline number of application enhancements hours (typically included as part of the fixed fee for applications support) with authorized incremental hours charged on a time and materials basis; and

Continue reading

Posted
By

In April, we wrote about what we were seeing in the cloud space, including the impact of cloud computing on the CIO agenda. Since then, Savvis published an independent survey of 550 CIOs and Senior IT personnel from large global enterprises concerning their IT outsourcing strategies, including those around cloud computing. We decided to take a look at how some of our personal experiences with cloud computing compared with the survey’s results. Spoiler alert: we weren’t far off.

We’ve seen: Some amount of talk, but not a great deal of action.

Savvis Survey Says: The industry generally agrees.

Continue reading

Posted
By

It has been six weeks since the SEC issued final rules relating to the reporting of conflict minerals. The rules apply to public companies that are subject to reporting requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (so-called “issuers”). Issuers must report on the use of conflict minerals in their products. You can read a summary of the rules and an outline of how they are to operate in our Client Alert: SEC Adopts Final Rules on Conflict Minerals Reporting.

In a nutshell, the rules require issuers to examine their supply chains for conflict minerals and to disclose their use in public filings with the SEC. Conflict minerals are certain minerals (including gold and ores from which tin, tantalum and tungsten are extracted) that originate from the Democratic Republic of Congo and adjoining countries. These minerals are used in electronics such as mobile phones, computers and digital cameras, in jewelry, and a wide range of other consumer and industrial products.

The rules are mandated by Section 1502 of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. As with many gifts from Washington, the complexity of the original legislative directive has mushroomed: the Dodd Frank provision runs for five pages. The SEC’s final ruling, with explanatory memoranda, runs to 356 pages. Consultants, lawyers and solution providers have been monitoring and lobbying for the development of the rules since Dodd Frank was passed. The rules have spawned a mini-industry to advise on compliance and navigate the due diligence and reporting requirements.

Continue reading

Posted
By

Historically, outsourcing agreements included terms typically lasting five to seven years or even longer – with additional years tacked on as options exercisable only by the customer. But several factors suggest that a customer should think twice and at least consider shorter term deals with its service providers:

  • The Deteriorating Business Case: At the end of a 5 year deal, the customer is often overpaying for the contracted services. This is true despite what appeared to be a great deal at the outset and various protections built into the agreement, including fixed declining pricing, benchmark rights and pricing reviews. Reasons for this phenomenon include:
    1. Non-labor IT costs decrease more rapidly than the declining price baked into the agreement, especially when measured over 5+ years
Continue reading

Posted
By

The pricing structure of outsourcing transactions often reflects a balancing of competing objectives. In the case of applications outsourcing services, most customers want the pricing structure to provide predictability and proper financial incentives for the supplier to continually increase productivity and efficiency in service delivery. At the same time, both the customer and supplier usually desire a pricing structure that is relatively simple and easy to administer.

While there are a variety of models used to price applications outsourcing services, the most prevalent model involves the following components:

  1. a fixed monthly charge for applications support;
Continue reading