Editor's note

Let the experts do their thing

I leave all the major household chores like ironing and cleaning to the weekends. But more often than not, the ironing doesn't get done during those days. The same pile of clothes remains on the sofa until the next weekend, waiting to be ironed or folded, and put away. The cycle repeats itself until I find the motivation to get it done.

Call me a lousy housekeeper or a procrastinator, but the thing is weekends are precious time for me and my hubby to catch up on the things we don't have time for during the weekdays. Rather than spend time on what I see as insignificant chores, I prefer to spend my Saturdays and Sundays doing things that enhance my well-being and my family life.

My best friend suggests I hire a housecleaner, so that the household chores get done and, more importantly, I'll have more time for the things that matter to me. I'm undecided. I'm not sure if I should pay someone to do something that I can do myself, even if he or she can do it better, but the idea sounds excellent.

The same dilemma is faced by small and midsize businesses (SMBs). With 101 things to do each day, the limited manpower and lack of in-house technical skills, should you get a third-party vendor to take care of your IT requirements?

Lim Chin Siang, CIO of the Media Development Authority of Singapore, says outsourcing is an option, especially for businesses that don't have the deep pockets to hire a team of IT specialists. He says it's better to leave it to the experts, so that you have more time on the things that matter, such as customer servicing and product planning.

A study conducted by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry last year found the top reasons for outsourcing to be the lack of in-house technical expertise and the opportunity to reduce IT expenses.

In this issue, we look into the benefits of outsourcing or out-tasking of selected IT functions, and provide a guide to the different services designed specifically for SMBs from vendors like IBM, HP, SingTel Managed Hosting Services and MessageLabs.

In other stories, CNETAsia's Eileen Yu gets useful tips on how SMBs can pick the right outsourcing vendor, while AMI-Partners' senior analyst Jackie Chan gives SMBs a reason to keep an eye out for China, a rising outsourcing powerhouse.

This month's spotlight also falls on two unlikely entrepreneurs who, through sheer determination and innovation, are walking down exciting new paths. CNETAsia's Aloysius Choong speaks to Explora Learning's Christine Tan, who combines her passions in the Web and child autism, and Satay Club's Mohamed Raffi who's proved that he's not "mad".

If you've got a story to tell or a view on the stories published here, write to us. We'd love to hear from you!