BT is pushing further into the IT services market, as it attempts to shed its image of being just a telco.
It unveiled a package of fully-managed IT products on Wednesday that are designed to replace the need for IT managers. BT is offering to supply PCs, servers and the network, install the equipment and monitor and maintain it.
The company says its "Business IT Manager" services will be aimed at small and medium-sized firms and will cost a fraction of the amount firms would pay to employ an IT professional.
"It is critical for SMEs to invest in the right technology for their business, but many have their time stolen as they get drawn into IT management and maintenance," said Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business.
"Now they can concentrate on managing their business, while we manage the IT."
But experts questioned the sense of SMEs outsourcing all their IT to one provider. Ben Booth, chairman of the British Computer Society user group BCS Elite, warned that although IT can be fully outsourced, firms still need the resource in-house to handle the relationship with the outsourcing supplier.
"It could be highly dangerous to outsource without the proper mechanism to manage the outsourced contract," he said. "Does BT offer guidance on strategy? If not, that guidance has to come from somewhere."
And Booth added, "BT is trying to move into a new market. IT services was not previously their core business. You should ask the questions you would about any supplier: ask if this is what they do best."
BT will offer several IT outsourcing packages, with a price of £37 per user per month for the top package.
BT has recently won IT contracts with several large organisations, including Unilever, Bank of New York, Grupo Santander and Lehman Brothers. It also has a key role in the NHS's Connecting for Health programme.
Talkback
BT cannot yet manage their telecoms side properly so adding even more complexity to their business is not going to do anything to remedy the situation. I wouldn't trust BT with my old PC let alone my company's network.
My short answer to this would be
"No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No "
I am sure you can guess the longer answer.
I was the technical support engineer on call during BT's first ever roll out of this system to a multi site company on the east coast. BT were paid in excess of £150000 per year just to monitor the systems to ensure that there were never any connectivity problems and all the systems would remain up and stable. BT were the most useless crocks of crap ever to grace the IT world.
The most typical description of what happened here is as follows.
My boss said to me "So we can prove how useless BT are and to mount a breach of contract case against them we are going to turn off a remote site, that BT is monitoring, and see how long it takes them to tell us. The SLA is within 1 hour but should be less than 15 minutes". The time was set for 12:30PM (middle of the day when the offices were full and people were able to take phone calls) and the power was taken. We waited 15 minutes, nothing, we waited an hour, nothing. It wasn't until more than two days later that when talking to a completely unrelated BT technical team that were totally separate to the network monitoring team that I was asked, as a side comment to what we were talking about "Did you know that your site in the south of England is currently not operational?" I replied, "wow, I know it is not your fault BUT it has only taken BT more than 2 days tell us. We turned it off on monday at 12:30 to see how long it took you to tell us, you are the first person to mention it to me". The guy I was talking to was sorry to work for BT and immediately spoke to the technical team that were responsible for telling us.
This is how useless BT are, they are one of the worst companies I know of and have had the misfortune of using. I would never, EVER in a million months of sundays EVER use BT for an IT outsourcing infrastructure unless I wanted it to fail and i was looking to bankrupt the company i was working for.
Keep WELL AWAY!