Locating The Best Web Sites In IT Professional Services/Outsourcing.

I am involved in designing and developing the content for  a web site
for an IT services company that provides IT and Business Process
Outsourcing (BPO) .It has a few hundred employees, is based in
Singapore and they plan to expand to the US by 2004.

What are the best 10 or 20 sites in this domain space? The Webby
Business Awards is the sort of award that will highlight sites I am
seeking, but they will only publish the results in May 2003.

It will also be useful to me to locate useful articles that review the
top IT /technology consulting sites.

Dear marrett88,

Thanks for your question.  First, let me request that if any of the
following is unclear or if you require any further research – please
don’t hesitate to ask me for a clarification.

You requested a list of the 10-20 best Web sites in the area of IT
professional services / outsourcing / consulting.  While the following
is based mostly on my personal opinion (these are the sites I go back
to again and again), it should definitely provide you with an
excellent starting point.  Btw, unfortunately, Webbys do not examine
such sites.  They should!!!

I think the absolute best site on the Web for IT professionals is
TechRepublic – the site is a free resource provided by Gartner (the
consultants), and it is extremely comprehensive and provides anything
and everything you would want, more or less.  The IT consulting
section is at-

http://www.techrepublic.com/republic.jhtml?id=r007&vf=bn7

But there are other interesting and relevant sections to this Web site
as well.

O’Reilly network is the hub for the publishing company that markets
what are arguably the most excellent technical books and guides –

http://www.oreillynet.com/

DevChannel is slanted towards developers, but provides a plethora of
information for anyone deeply involved in IT –

http://devchannel.org/

Google directory provides a comprehensive list of all tech-related
news sites –
http://directory.google.com/Top/News/By_Subject/Information_Technology/?tc=1/

The very best news and resource sites for IT professionals are ZDNet
and Cnet, at –

http://www.zdnet.com/

and

www.cnet.com

respectively.

The W3C  (the World Wide Web Consortium) is the international
standards body that defines and guides most of the technologies we use
on a daily basis.  They are at –

http://www.w3.org/

Whatis?  Is the best lexical reference for IT professionals – I have
rarely run in to a term, acronym or concept that Whatis? Could not
help me understand –

http://whatis.techtarget.com/

InformIT includes extensive information on everything from business
and eCommerce through databases, IT management, operating systems,
security, wireless –

http://www.informit.com/

it-analysis.com provides analysis of recent news stories and let’s
information technology professionals stay on the cutting edge – with
an opinion, no less…

http://www.it-analysis.com/index.php

ExtremeTech is almost more of a hobbyist’s site, but it’s a must for
anyone touching hardware –

http://www.nyq.extremetech.com/

baseX, on the other hand, is and extremely ‘deep’ site, almost
academic (but not quite, don’t worry!) –

http://www.basex.com/web/tbghome.nsf/pages/index

builder.com is another excellent IT resource that leaves almost no IT
ground unturned, so to speak…

http://builder.com.com/b_index.jhtml

computing.net provides tech support, drivers and forums for almost
every operating system known to man –

http://www.computing.net/

UsableWeb is an excellent directory for usability, something every IT
professional runs into sooner or later…links to over 1,000 relevant
sources –

http://www.usableweb.com/

Finally, the MIT Technology Review provides great coverage of the
technology industry, helping keep IT professionals “in-the-know” –

http://www.technologyreview.com/

I hope this response adequately addresses your request.  If you are in
need of additional sources, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Thanks,
ragingacademic-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by marrett88-ga on 30 Dec 2002 06:31 PST

Thanks, Ragingacademic.You have highlighted sites that provide content
for IT professionals etc .However, what I wanted was "excellent "
sites in the IT outsourcing/consulting/profesional services business
space.Leading companies in this space would be CSC, EDS etc but I dont
think their sites are in the "excellent" category .

That was why I mentioned the new Webby Business Award , a new category
in the Webby awards. There are so many "web awards " but few that
really matter like the Webby awwards( Time magazine calls them the
"Oscars of the web").

It does not matter if the site has not got an award- I just need to
study reviews /articles done on such sites so that I can determine how
they have done a a great job in terms of design, customer interaction
, content etc . They may not be well known names like EDS, CSC etc but
their sites have impressed some reviewers and these reviewers discuss
why they found them good.

Hope this clarifies what I am seeking.

---

Clarification of Answer by ragingacademic-ga on 30 Dec 2002 19:02 PST

marrett88 -

Ok, understood.  Thanks for your clarification.
I will work on this some more and post the requisite information here
within a couple of days.

My apologies concerning the Webby Business awards - I had not heard
about these yet...have been voting in the Webbys for the past few
years, though!

Happy new year!
thanks,
ragingacademic

---

Request for Answer Clarification by marrett88-ga on 30 Dec 2002 21:18 PST

Ragingacademic, I scanned through some of your answers to queries
posted by others. Your respones are of a very high quality !!.

My interest is to study some very high quality sites in IT
outsourcing/consultancy. However, I will be happy to study reviews
done on  sites  that provide professional services,management
consultancy etc  eg Mckinsey etc

Finally, best wishes for 2003.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by marrett88-ga on 06 Jan 2003 18:13 PST

Hi Ragingacademic

    Any update ?

Thanks

---

Clarification of Answer by ragingacademic-ga on 06 Jan 2003 19:33 PST

marrett88 -

Hi.  Thanks for your earlier comments.
My apologies for not returning to you yet, I have asked for help from
a friend (kind of like on "Who wants to be a millionaire..." :-)

I hope to be able to post by tomorrow, and if not then by Wednesday at
the latest.

Thanks for your patience.

best,
ragingacademic

---

Clarification of Answer by ragingacademic-ga on 08 Jan 2003 14:28 PST

marrett88 –

Upon completing some additional research, here are my recommendations
for outstanding IT consulting sites –

First, winners of the 2000 and 2002 Web Awards (administered by the
Web Marketing Association) –

BORN

http://www.born.com/

“BORN, a leading e-Business and technology consulting firm announced
today that it has received a Standard of Excellence award from the
national Web Marketing Association (WMA). This 2000 WebAward
recognizes the standard of excellence for which all corporate web
sites should strive. Based on WMA's judging criteria, Standard of
Excellence winners "represent the backbone of the web today, setting
the standard for all corporate and consulting web sites."”

Source:
BORN's Web Site Named Among the Best in 2000 
PR Newswire; New York; Nov 14, 2000;

Convergsys

http://www.convergys.com/

(2002 Web Awards winner)

Keep an eye out for the 2003 awards.

Second, some IT consulting sites recommended to me as being among the
best –

McKinsey & Company

http://www.mckinsey.com/

True, they are a management consulting firm, but they also do some of
the best IT work – and their site is absolutely tops in terms of
content.

BCG Consulting (Boston Consulting Group)

http://www.bcg.com/

Again, not JUST IT – but IT has grown to command a major slice of this
firm’s business -

http://www.bcg.com/practice/information_technology.asp

Accenture

http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=index.xml

Definitely one of the top IT consulting companies (formerly part of
Arthur Andersen), and also a top producer of content.  See also –

http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enWeb&xd=_isc\ischome.xml&c=refracapr&n=home&t=email

Cap Gemini

http://www.cgey.com/

Another one of the top global IT consultancies.

IBM Global Services

http://www-1.ibm.com/services/

A lot of information, easily navigable, but very primitively set up.

Razorfish

http://www.razorfish.com/razorfish/home.cfm?isFlash=true&isNS=false&isIE=true&isMAC=false&isPC=true&bBrowserCheck=1&bVersion=6&URLInfo=

One of the dot.com era IT shops that managed to do better than others
through the downturn

Perot Systems

http://www.perotsystems.com/

Interesting layout, weak on content

Dimension Data

http://www.proxicom.com/

AMS

http://www.amsinc.com/

Some additional sources that may prove useful –


EDS Grows Faster, but IBM Global Services Holds No. 1 in TBR’s PSBQ
Benchmark Scoring

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2002/7/prweb42355.php

IBM Takes the Early Lead in Brand Awareness with Customers for
E-Commerce and E-Business Solutions, But the Race is Far From Over

http://www.itsma.com/press/NewsFromITSMA/Brand99pr.htm


I hope this additional information helps in completing my response to
your query.  Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thanks,
ragingacademic