In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn explained that a paradigm is a worldview that is vulnerable to being displaced when new ideas render it obsolete.

It’s increasingly clear that conventional approaches to IT infrastructure management are not aligned with the expectations and demands of our fast-paced, networked, global economy. However, a new paradigm has not yet been thoroughly articulated or embraced. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence of resistance from the IT and vendor camps.

And yet, the outlines of a new worldview are in sight. Companies that embrace this view will increasingly concentrate their internal IT resources on delivering competitive advantage and outsource the rest. Solutions will be solidly based on predictability, scalability and process-driven systems, not personal expertise or globally arbitraged labor.

Times of great change require bold yet thoughtful leaders. IT executives will need to develop specific plans that enable them to move dedicated resources from foundational IT to strategic IT in a timely manner. They will also need to concentrate on getting quick wins through the outsourcing of discrete, well-defined activities that represent manageable risk and measurable rewards.

Clearly, the cost of maintaining existing IT infrastructure continues to come at the expense of innovation and strategic value. Will companies embrace the new worldview or remain committed to supporting, maintaining and defending the old one.

Outsourcing partners cannot deliver true operational excellence if their business models are based merely on skilled labor. There are several key capabilities that companies should look for in an infrastructure outsourcer.

* Proactive methodologies and capabilities. Rather than waking up a service technician or a database administrator in the middle of the night to deal with a problem, outsourced support for the infrastructure should be around-the-clock. Central to the future success of outsourcers in network management, help desk, database administration and other areas is their ability to address concerns and problems on a 24/7 basis. Monitoring technologies should give them clear visibility into the operational issues associated with their area of specialization. They’ll need to rely on systems and methodologies to ensure they deliver on their service-level agreements. It is often impossible to provide these levels of service if the activities are managed entirely in-house or completely overseas, which are models that cannot offer 24/7 monitoring and problem resolution.