A new survey reveals a picture of dissatisfaction in outsourced mainframe application development, maintenance and infrastructure management. While many companies are turning to outsourcing to reduce costs and acquire technical expertise that may not exist in-house, the research shows that failures in knowledge transfer, inefficient coding, outdated equipment and lack of performance testing are commonplace.

The global end-user survey of 520 senior IT professionals (98 from the FS sector) has been released by Compuware. Key findings from the FS sector respondents are: 70 per cent of companies are frustrated by the hidden costs of mainframe outsourcing; 73 per cent expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of new applications or services ; 90 per cent of companies on CPU consumption-based pay structures believe their outsourcer could manage their CPU costs better; 69 per cent outsource maintenance of mainframe applications because their in-house team no longer has the legacy knowledge to maintain them; 82 per cent believe difficulties in knowledge transfer are impacting the quality of outsourced projects.

“It is true that outsourcing can help companies reduce costs and gain access to technical expertise they might not have in house, particularly as experienced mainframe developers move on and take their applications knowledge with them,” says Kris Manery, senior vice president and general manager, mainframe solutions, Compuware. “However, as the research shows, there is a growing frustration that outsourcers are failing to meet expectations. Because there is no means to easily transfer application knowledge to the outsourcer - and to verify code quality and performance when it is delivered - application quality suffers, thus undermining any potential savings.”

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