Outsourcers aim to aid new data center Doing your due diligence Deciding to outsource Tooling up for the new data center The self-managing desktop Compelled to outsource

Data center outsourcing is a different game from what it was earlier this decade. Contracts are shrinking from six to 10 years to three to five years, according to Deloitte Consulting. Single-provider megadeals are on the wane, Gartner reports. And while cost reduction is still a big reason for signing outsourcing deals, many corporations are no longer just interested in passing on "their mess for less," says Jeff Kaplan, president of Thinkstrategies. Increasingly, he says, IT executives look toward outsourcing providers for help migrating from legacy environments to the more flexible and lower-cost platforms of the new data center.

"Most people are feeling overwhelmed with the whole 'new data center' idea," Kaplan says. "It's pretty complicated, with dozens of technologies involved, and very few corporations have enough internal expertise to sort it out."

IBM, one of the leading outsourcers, sees a troika of concerns driving IT executives to consider outsourcing their new data center migration, says Mike Riegel, Big Blue's director of on-demand business. "Business leaders today are simultaneously interested in growing revenue, cutting costs and being more flexible - never before have we seen them do all three at the same time, " he says

Outsourcers are responding by incorporating more new-data-center technology into their service offerings. Here's a look inside five leading outsourcing operations.

CSC: Results-Driven Computing Grid

Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), which does not make products for the new data center, plays up the benefits of vendor agnosticism.

In the storage arena, for example, CSC relies mainly on Hitachi Data Systems, whose Tagmastore Universal Storage Platform virtualizes heterogeneous storage systems into one pool, and EMC, which recently began offering a network-based storage virtualization system called Invista. It also works with a range of other vendors, including Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Sun. It tops off its storage offering with automated provisioning and management software from Creekpath Systems, says Chris Helme, CSC's vice president of global production operations.