First priority? Be the business-technology champion for your parent organization. Only the internal IT department can fill that role; outside entities almost always have their own agendas. To do it right, you'll need to closely examine your resources and goals.

You'll find that even if your resources are mammoth, trying to do everything in-house will likely cause more problems and cost more than it's worth. Take the company that wants to act as the ISP for its staff and customers. Besides building and maintaining the ISP services, the company must set up the billing infrastructure and support entities, among other things. To whom do you pay attention? What's your mission? Who gets priority, your ISP or internal customers? Do you have dedicated staff for your ISP practice, or are you sharing your network operations center staff with your enterprise network?

The world of services is complex. Just as there are general contractors who can help you with any type of work in your home, so too are there general IT service providers: These are typically huge, multinational companies, and their sheer resources can compensate for their lack of focus. Niche providers are more focused on a particular technology area (such as security, network management or storage) but perhaps don't have the big-picture view of the generalists. How do you choose? How do you negotiate a contract? What happens if the relationship goes sour? Are there strategies to help lessen the support burden of equipment maintenance? What do you do when you're convinced that outsourcing isn't the answer and you simply need more staff?

Answering these questions is our goal in this issue. The articles that follow in this segment of our special IT Agenda series address choosing, contracting and managing the relationship with service providers, as well as expanding your staff when you've decided to keep certain services in-house. Plus, in our Workshop section, we discuss how to handle that ubiquitous business need: telephone service.