Thanks to what I'm calling a compelling event--a plan to move Direct Energy's headquarters, including one of two data centers, from Toronto to Houston--we have the opportunity to reexamine how we deliver IT to our business stakeholders. We knew that we must take advantage of this event to set up a different operating model than we have today, building new relationships with technology partners. The goal is for my IT staff to manage our tools to create business value while our partners, who are necessarily more technically knowledgeable, provide the ideas and execution for infrastructure, network services, cloud and more. We're already in discussions, and I'm telling them up front that we aren't looking to sign the same old outsourcing contracts.

We are on an 18-month plan for this headquarters move, which means that these partnerships must be in place in the next 12 months. One of the biggest challenges that we're facing is changing the culture at the providers, who seem to still have an outsourcer mentality. I'm seeing it in the responses, which are very disjointed, indicating that their infrastructure teams are separated from their cloud teams and so on. How can we encourage vendors to step out of this box?

Advice: Be Honest About Expectations and Dynamics

Larry Bonfante, CIO, United states Tennis Association

When it's clear that there are many groups on the vendor side, I'd start with strongly requesting an overarching relationship manager. Get one for each company you're talking to, and then invite them in for a day where you can talk to them about your company, the corporate mission and vision, and how IT fits into accomplishing those goals. I've often told vendors, "Forget about service delivery; what would you do to address these business priorities?"