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Best of breed and single vendor are two sides of the same coin. An enterprise has to toss it for any one of them depending on the need. Lately the single vendor concept is being adapted globally. For the CIO, as a captain, it is a difficult task to take a call on the toss for any one particular side. A CIO has to manage the budget, which has been shrinking every year resulting in cost cutting and at the same time improve the quality from time to time.

The expectations of customers are increasing, so a CIO has to balance between both, cost and time. In my opinion a single vendor approach will address both the concerns. Till some time back we all felt that “best of breed” provider would have the technology and expertise to handle a particular issues but due to change in the trend in enterprises, the vendors were forced to develop an over all expertise in all the areas.

G Radhakrishna Pillai head-IT, SRL Ranbaxy

Earlier to get connectivity, CIO used to depend on the office administration staff to stand in a queue at any MTNL/BSNL office to get a last mile. And they (MTNL/BSNL) did not take responsibility of other peripherals required for the connectivity like modem, router etc. This again was not available with a single vendor and even if we get it from one vendor we could not be sure whether they would be able to configure it efficiently.

In this global economy, vendors are to be considered as a strategic partner of the enterprise rather than consider them as IT suppliers. The selection of a strategic partner should be done cautiously and especially if it is a one-stop solution for all the enterprise IT needs.

Relying upon a single trusted strategic partner is better than having so called best of breed. It can ensure better quality, effective monitoring of SLA etc. Monitoring, managing the multiple vendors is a complex, time consuming and expensive too. In today's competitive market managing time is very critical for the organization and CIO can also use the time effectively by having a single vendor approach.

As I mentioned earlier, if a vendor feels that the enterprise considers them as a strategic partner, the vendor will be loyal to the organization and the vendor will provide prompt service, better price and support the organization at all times. In turn, the vendor is assured a continuous and ready business without spending time and money for accruing business.

Another aspect is that when we use the best of breed for different services, the final cost for each service will be far more and at the end of the day if some issues turn up the service providers and vendors play the blame game. In such a scenario, the CIO is caught in the loop and loses both money and time for coordination, tracking the service/consignment and getting service.

But in case of a single vendor, final accountability remains with that vendor. In the coming years, we will see not only a few big deals happening with single vendor taking the contract but other larger and medium organizations will also fall in line with the single vendor theory.

As told to Shrikanth G 
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in

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