Many companies have yet to be convinced they'll save money MUNICH – Even though Deutsche Bank decided last year to outsource its IT operations to IBM, German enterprises remain generally weary of handing over the keys to their computer rooms, according to one German outsourcing expert.Many have yet to be convinced that they’ll save money by outsourcing their IT operations, while others are concerned about losing their inhouse IT expertise, Hans-Peter Ullrich, marketing director of TeraGate, said Monday on the sidelines of the FiberComm conference here.TeraGate is one of several German companies providing a range of IT services in the country, in addition to a handful of global players, such as IBM and Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Deutsche Bank Industrial Holdings is an investor in the German IT service provider. “The Deutsche Bank deal is really an exception in Germany,” Ullrich said. “A lot of companies here are still unwilling to consider outsourcing because they don’t know if they’re actually going to save money on IT in the long run or pay more. Mistakes were made in the past, and they were costly.”German enterprises are also worried about losing their IT experts and relying too heavily on others not only to manage their business-critical IT systems but also to make critical technology decisions moving ahead, according to Ullrich. “There’s definitely a trust issue,” he said.DaimlerChrysler, according to Ullrich, is one example of a German company that has gone the entire gamut: The German half of the group had initially developed a huge pool of in-house IT expertise before launching a subsidiary, Debis Systemhaus, to take over this business and later operate as independent outsourcing company, according to Ullrich. The group then sold Debis to Deutsche Telekom to focus on its core car making business. Since then, however, DaimlerChrysler has been amassing substantial inhouse IT expertise, according to Ullrich. “DaimlerChrysler knows how important IT is to the company,” he said. Software Development