Facilities Management - Outsourcing

Facilities management concept

The term facilities management refers to outsourcing part of one's services, i.e. entrust all or part of the management of the information system to a third-party computer service provider.

The provision of services is documented in a service contract (or Service Level Agreement, SLA) which defines the terms and conditions the service provider agrees to and the expected Quality of Service (QoS).

Facilities management has its advocats and components, considering that:

• one one hand, it allows the enterprise to focus on its core business and entrust management of its computer system to a company who has suitable competences and is able to maintain it 24/7 (as per the service level agreement)
• on the other hand, the enterprise becomes dependent on a third-party and partly loses its computer competence

Generally speaking, facilities management is always chosen in full awareness of total costs (TCO, Total Cost of Ownership), comprising the price of the computer material, networks, maintenance of competences of the computer teams and possibly the costs incurred as a result of service shutdowns and/or updates.