Transformational Outsourcing: 10 Best Practices for Enterprise Counsel

Peter Geroge, Partner, Baker McKenzie

Outsourcing has always been transformational, changing the way that enterprises operate to focus on core competencies, improve critical business functions and reduce costs. That has not changed. But what is changing is the use of outsourcing to empower the large-scale migration of applications and data from legacy infrastructure to secure hyperscale environments. This change is being driven by (i) legacy application providers, who are moving away from perpetual software licensing models to as a service delivery models, (ii) enterprise customers that recognize the value of the scale and flexibility of enterprise cloud, (iii) system integrators that have invested millions of dollars into transformational service delivery and (iv) hyperscale providers eager to capture long term consumption commitments. The time is right to transform the digital back-office, and outsourcing is the way to do it. When taking a decision to outsource, from the choice to replace a licensed ERP system with a cloudbased alternative to a large-scale migration of legacy IT infrastructure to the cloud, there are key legal issues to consider. This article highlights the 10 best practices when advising clients on these projects.