Blackbox and outsourcing

In my opinion most analysts and experts overlook one important impact of the Blackbox: When you´ve outsourced your IT you get back choice with the Blackbox. Most of the time you outsource some systems they stay at this oursourcer until the end of their lifetime. That´s a really bad negotiating position. Now imagine the following construct: You put your datacenter in a blackbox and give it to an outsourcer. You buy a second one for disaster recovery purposes. And give it to a different outsourcer. The blackboxes are integrated in your corporate networks via VPN tunnel, so IP numbers of the systems never change, where ever the systems are located. Time goes by and you find a cheaper or better outsourcer. Or you want to in-source it. Now think about the following process

• You switch over to the DR blackbox.
• You order a truck to transport you main blackbox to your new outsourcer (The Blackbox withstand a 6.7 earthquake while online, an offline truck transport is a piece of cake for this baby)
• You connect the the main blackbox to the network of the new outsourcer
• After some testing, you switch back to the main Blackbox at the new outsourcer
• You are operative at the new outsourcing company</ul> No recabling, no reinstallation. Now you have really a chance to change the outsourcer. And the threat of changing the outsourcing service provider starts to get a very viable threat.