BC IT Outsourcing 2014/15
15 Jul 2015If what goes up must come down, nobody told BC’s IT outsourcers, because they continue to gobble up a larger chunk of the government pie every year.
The BC Public Accounts came out today, and I’m happy to say that the People Who Are Smarter Than You Are managed to book another record year of billings: a $468,549,154 spend, up 8% over last year.
It’s not a victory unless you beat someone else, so good news:
- Overall government revenue, up 5.4%
- Overall government spending, up 2.4%
- Health spending, up 2.8%
- Education spending, up 0%
- IT services spending up 8%!!!!
Don’t be sad, kids and sick people, IT services folks are Adding Value and Finding Synergies in ways that you just can’t. In the long run, workshopping the new Management Strategy Realignment Plan is just a better investment than fixing your gimpy hip, or hiring a teaching assistant to help Angry Jimmy focus on his work.
HP Advanced Solutions continues to dominate the category, adding $20M in billings this year alone (How many teachers could that hire? At least 200. Or even more teaching assistants.) In fact, two thirds of the billing growth this year was just HP.
There’s also a new kid in the enterprise software vendor list to keep an eye on: Salesforce.com (SFDC) showed up with a wee $463,053 in billings this year. I expect that to increase mightily in coming years. However, the big money in SFDC work will not be earned by SFDC (even after locking up the entire BC government enterprise back-office, Oracle bills less than $10M a year in software maintenance), but by the consultants providing SFDC “implementation services” (Deloitte, CGI, HP). Watch for a SFDC goldrush as the government starts replacing expensive Oracle systems with… expensive SFDC systems in the cloud.
The best part about hiring big enterprise IT companies like HP, Oracle, Maximus, and CGI to create lots of important Technology Process (and occasionally a bit of Product) for us isn’t the soothingly glacial pace of progress or the fantastic billing rates. It’s knowing that at least 20% of every public dollar spent goes straight to the bottom line of those companies, ensuring that shareholders and institutional investors survive through another year without undue financial hardship.
Until next year, keep on spending, British Columbia!