You have decided that outsourcing your IT is the answer to your problems and your boss has just given you an article on Multisourcing as the way to go about it. You read on..So I need to split up my IT into discrete areas and then find best of breed suppliers to deliver these discrete areas. And the benefits of doing this include cheaper prices, better service levels and toolsets. That's what best of breed means doesn't it? It sounds great. Multisourcing will give me the best suppliers and the best prices. I can't loose, can I, this is the silver bullet I have been looking for?

Before you go headlong into a Multisourcing IT sourcing strategy lets just look a little deeper behind what such a solution would really mean for you..

Say you split up your IT department into three discrete areas, let's say Infrastructure, Applications development and support and Networks. At the end of 6 months work you have a separate contract in place for each of these three areas and you have built a retained team to manage your new outsourced delivery operation and work with your business to turn business needs into IT solutions. You have three top tier suppliers, experts in their own area, using state of the art tools for system management, ITIL processes, and prices that would be the envy of the market.

However, let's look at some of the less obvious challenges of Multisourcing. The cornerstone of any service contract is the service level agreement (SLA). In crude terms this describes the level of service the supplier will deliver for the price. So what sort of SLA's could be expected in this sort of Multisourcing environment? You have contracted separately for the three areas and the SLAs you are likely to get will be for those discrete three areas. For example, the Infrastructure supplier will commit to keeping the servers and desktops running, the Network supplier will contract for lines and their capacity, routers, hubs and LANs and the applications development supplier will agree to respond, perhaps resolve, incidents within a specific time as long as the incident was within their span of responsibility.

Ask yourself the question "Is this what your users want?" If it is, all well and good, but you may also want something better, end2end SLAs. Someone who will take ownership of an incident from start to finish and commit to a specific service level for end2end service, such as the availability, performance, capacity and stability of an application at the desktop. Multisourcing can rarely deliver this other than through the in-house team providing the glue and a commitment to deliver to an overarching OLA, although this is very unlikely to be contractual binding. Some organisations introduce complex "co-operation" agreements between suppliers in an attempt to get them to work together, but it rarely works satisfactorily and can breakdown .

Another interesting aspect of Multisourcing, often overlooked is dealing with a change or a project. In a single source, in-house or outsourced, environment you will specify a change or project once describing the business need or outcome and leaving the solution to be designed and implemented by one group who will ensure that nothing falls between the gaps. How might this differ in a Multisourcing environment? In the example above the customer would specify three separate changes or project briefs, and unless a Prime is appointed, will need to manage three suppliers, their egos, and ensure that their work fits together in terms of deliverables and timescales. For example, if application performance is poor it is not uncommon for the application provider to blame the infrastructure and the Infrastructure supplier to say that the application is built inefficiently. All of which, usually results in deadlines being missed, budgets blown and litigation.

So is Multisourcing the answer? It might be depending upon your circumstances. The lesson in this article is to think carefully before you embark on a Multisourcing strategy, otherwise you could be forever "minding the gap".

Tony Adams is a Senior Manager with Alsbridge plc, the award winning advisors on outsourcing, shared services and offshoring. Tony can be contacted at tony.adams@alsbridge.eu or on +44(0) 20 7242 0666.