Multisourcing Is The New Normal For Global Telecom Services

Forrester regularly receives requests from IT clients about the preferred sourcing approaches of large multinational corporations (MNCs) for outsourced or managed network and telecom services. IT sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals we've worked with during the past two years complain that even the largest global operators are unable to deliver consistent service levels for large-scale international wide-area network (WAN) services and other telecom services. As a result, while nearly every client we've worked with wants to consolidate vendors and finds the idea of single-sourcing global telecommunications appealing, very few actually do so. Of more than a dozen RFPs for global WAN and voice services we've developed and reviewed for clients during the past several months, not one resulted in single-sourcing even for modest-size (fewer than 50 sites) WANs in Western Europe and North America. We recommend that SVM professionals focus instead on streamlining practices around telecom sourcing and governance, including developing RFP templates with standard pricing models, service-level agreements (SLAs), and other terms and conditions.