Vendor, service provider ties raise issues of objectivity.
Soon after Mike Parks heard that Hewlett-Packard Co. and PricewaterhouseCoopers were talking merger, he found himself with a nagging doubt: What if, wondered the CIO at NorthPoint Communications Group, Price water- houseCoopers, once under HP's wing, found itself unable or unwilling to work closely with such major HP competitors as Sun Microsystems?
"If, for some reason, Sun feels HP is no longer a reliable partner and decides not to use [Pricewaterhouse Coopers], then that would affect my decision," said Parks, who uses Sun servers at NorthPoint and has engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers for a major operations support system project.
Not that Parks is close to looking for a new integration services provider. After all, the merger discussions, announced last month, aren't done yet. And Parks is solidly satisfied with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Still, experts say, Parks and IT executives like him are wise to start asking tough questions about the increasingly complex web of ties being created among their integration/consulting providers and hardware and software vendors. Once loath to get too close to IT vendors for fear of appearing to compromise their objectivity, large consultants are cosying up to vendors as never before. Increasingly, vendors are investing in integrators, integrators are investing in vendors, and both are entering into ever-tighter partnerships. The service providers say they're doing it for their customers, who, eager to jump-start e-businesses, are demanding new applicationsâ€"everything from e-procurement to e-commerceâ€"fast. By forming alliances with vendors, consultant say, they can get better access to training and technology and, in turn, roll out e-business systems quicker.
The close ties, however, mean that IT managers should think twice before assuming that consultants and systems integrators are always acting as objective advisers when recommending best-of-breed products and technologies, experts say. Increas ingly, IT managers need to understand the ties between vendors and service providers and, ultimately, make sure that they retain control of the important technology decisions.
"None of the big firms can claim complete objectivity," said Tom Rodenhauser, founder and president of Consulting Information Services LLC, in Keene, N.H. "I think [clients] still view consultants as neutral and bringing the best solution, but that's often not the case. They don't view it as a problem until the technology blows up."
