Managing Offshore IT

Most of us watching the news are probably up-to-date on the Swine Flu outbreak. The Media, bloggers and others are generating awareness . . . and a lot of buzz. I was reflecting on what this mean to those of us in the Business of Globalization. Such epidemics certainly a cause for concern. The way I look at it:

• In the short run the pandamic will certainly impact trade and business as people become hesitant to get on a plane, travel and attend critical meetings. Companies, especially multinationals, will send out travel advisories based on their individual corporate risk assessments. More governments may issue travel advisories. Cross-continental and international travellers may have to undergo additional screening. . . . etc . etc.

Continue reading "Global Swine Flu threat. Notes from the past: What next?" »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During the past few weeks, one couldn’t glance through the international headlines without reading about the saga of Piracy unfolding in the Gulf of Aden and at high-seas. To those of us in the software IT services business, another version of this scourge continues to impact us: software piracy. 

Given that Piracy is noteworthy and the pirates at sea are operate offshore, I am surprised that some smart alec writer or blogger hasn’t picked up on offshoring piracy. It is probably because large software services firms, Infosys included, take Intellectual property rights seriously. Most have strong policies and guidelines preventing employees, consultants and service providers from indulging in such acts and violations are not tolerated.

Continue reading "Piracy, Pirates and Offshore Techies" »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

After I stopped by this blog last week to cross-post from entry on our EA blog, I was pleasantly surprised to see a ping from Michael, with whom I have exchanged notes in the past. He asks if my perspective has changed as rapidly as the global economic landscape.

Michael, sure my perspective has changed . . .  in more ways than one. This said, it is fascinating - though not amusing - to see fellow techies suddenly transform into armchair experts in macro-economics, finance, globalization, free-trade etc etc, all the while wondering “what hit us?,” and “where to go from here?” and most importantly “what does this all mean to me?”

Continue reading "Any Oscars for Offshoring Slumdogs?" »

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I read the interesting story about “High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas” in the Wired magazine a few months ago. [blog on gizmodo.com] The part that caught my fancy was the distinct parallel between the Cowboy life of the protagonists in the story and Architects working for offshoring firms: experts in their niche skills who are able and willing to travel to unchartered waters (literally) to salvage sinking ships (or projects). Unlike the Deep-Sea-Cowboys, the Offshoring ones don’t generally risk their lives or limbs; though it sometimes feels like it when one hits rough tides in projects. This said, for Architect-cowboys, roughing-it-up may include a missed flight connection or being stranded at an unscheduled stopover due to inclement weather, secondary inspections at unusually long immigration and customs etc etc.

Continue reading "Offshore Architects as High Tech Cowboys" »

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Before you jump the gun, this blog entry is not about American politics or its leaders. :-)  I came across this interesting writeup in informationweek.com analyzing the system and technology view, focused on how “Obama, Clinton, McCain Passport Breaches Expose Human, Not Tech Weakness.” The article begins by stating how the unauthorized access was caught by a monitoring system that was tripped when three State Department contractors accessed the electronic records.

Reading about this incident, I began reflecting on my experience with IT in the Government and the security policies and checks-and-balances inherent to managing such systems.

Continue reading "Information Security and Passport Breach of Obama, Clinton, McCain’s data and Offshoring.." »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at a meeting with CXOs and technology leaders of a client recently when the topic jumped to Risk, Disaster Recovery and Risk Mitigation. And as expected, the first question that popped up was the recent Internet cable breakdown in Egypt [CNN article] and its impact on offshoring and our operations

Thanks to varied viewpoints of bloggers - Nicholas Carr, Blogger News Network  Marc Parent et al - the issues, including the ‘global security’ ‘sabotage’  and economic impact have been debated threadbare during the past few weeks. The media was also quick to ‘analyze’ the impact on software majors in South Asia, and naturally, Infosys figured in a fair number of articles too. [e.g Economic Times, Finance Week]

Continue reading "Offshoring and Internet Cables cut in Egypt" »

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I blogged about the Merger and Acquisitions in the enterprise software space last week, and almost as a follow-up came the big news of Oracle bidding for BEA. How this deal will play out is anybody’s guess: Analysts are already speculating: Oracle bid too low says BEA, Wall Street Journal’s The Business Technology Blog sums up the implications, which tech analyst and blogger Om Malik seems agree with: 

The only obvious losers in this deal are other midsize software companies and their customers. Between SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects earlier this week and the potential BEA deal, it’s clear that the era of the midsize software company is over. The big guys need to grow, and the only way they can continue to do so is by buying smaller companies. This should cause uncertainty at mid-size software companies, which is never good for customers.

Going back to my earlier blog and the interesting points made by Michael about M and A among enterprise software vendors and the increasing role of offshore players in the segment:

Continue reading "Continued ..the offshoring angle on Enterprise Applciations, M&A" »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Follow-up to my blog earlier this week [Patenting Offshoring Jobs or a patent to manage offshoring processes?]. Thanks to Stephanie Overby and others for mailing me about the latest: "Power to the People: IBM Withdraws Offshoring Patent". Stephanie blogs
Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards, is helping to spread the word for his colleagues in the presumably overworked intellectual property division:
"IBM has put into the public domain and withdrawn its application for patent number US2007/0162321 - Outsourcing of Services. This patent application covers analyzing work flows, skills, economic costs, etc. Here’s why we are withdrawing it — IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents. Even though the patent application in question was filed eight months before the policy took effect in September, 2006, had the policy been in place at the time, IBM would not have filed the application. We’re glad the community pointed this application out so IBM could take swift action."

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A while ago, I had blogged about innovation and an Infosys colleague being granted a patent. Over the weekend, I came across an interesting blog post on Slashdot that talks about how “IBM Seeks US Patents For Offshoring US Jobs” The blogger says "IBM and other corporations are seeking patents for inventions covering the offshoring of US jobs. The USPTO is considering IBM's patent application for Outsourcing of Services, a 'method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization' to 'countries where cheaper labor prices and/or cheaper materials are available.'

Here’s an abstract of the patent application from USPTO’s website: “A method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization. The method is provided on a computer readable medium and includes the steps of identifying at least one task being performed by an organization; associating each identified task with a functional group within a plurality of functional groups related to the organization; determining information about individual human resources spent on each task; determining task information about human resources spent on the plurality of tasks, the task information based on the determined information about individual human resources spent on each task; using the determined task information to determine a value of each task; and outsourcing tasks having a value lower than a predefined limit to at least one of offshore and to a low cost supplier.”

Continue reading "Patenting Offshoring Jobs or a patent to manage offshoring processes?" »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Infosys Rumored To Eye Bid For Capgemini ran a headline in Forbes and other business media, earlier this summer, causing a bit of a buzz in the stock-markets. Quoting the forbes article “They’re both denying it, but the markets are abuzz with rumors that Indian software giant Infosys will attempt to acquire a controlling stake in European tech consultancy Capgemini”  Another news, this time about a real merger in the offshoring space [Wipro completes cash tender offer for Infocrossing] was also watched closely by analysts and technologists alike.

Now, I am not given to rumors, but in my day job as an Architect, consultant and advisor to CxOs and technology leaders, I come across my share of smoke-and-mirrors on various aspects of technology management, including on Mergers and Acquisitions. I have to be cautious in voicing my opinion as I am bound by my employment contract, but then, it is hard for me to totally abstain from analysis of ‘hypothetical’ possibilities, the ‘what if’ scenario planning as management gurus call it.  And this is certainly a trend that media is closely watching. [Example, #1 among the “Five outsourcing trends to watch” Consolidation … also blogged online ]

Continue reading "M & A among offshorers .. or is it Offshoring M & A?" »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In my previous blog, we looked at some of the viewpoints on Insourcing, especially as portrayed in the business/technology media. The recent chatter in the blogsphere [eg: Argolon, Curious Cat, James McGovern, Apu ...] began with Riya’s blog about the company’s insourcing experience. 

The story generated enough online buzz to culminate in a front-page story on the Wall Street Journal [Some in Silicon Valley Begin to Sour on India: A Few Bring Jobs Back As Pay of Top Engineers In Bangalore Skyrockets]. The story focused around how a few like the Silicon Valley startup Riya Inc setup captive Offshore Development Centers (ODCs), only to discover that the overheads were unmanageable. Result: “In April, Mr. Shah shut down the Bangalore office and offered half of its engineers a chance to move to San Mateo, Calif., with work visas.” What the article, and bloggers didn’t focus is on how a few small/mid-size companies also occasionally insource some outsourced work for internal/strategic reasons. I witnessed one such instance with a client of ours recently.

Continue reading "Part 2: Insourcing and outsourcing: two sides to the same coin?" »

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The tech media, analysts and bloggers love a catchy title, and of late there are several stories with the ‘I’ word trying to generate some eyeballs. Just a couple of recent titles.

• India firm's 'in-sourcing' creates jobs for Georgia says The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Same story, with a different title: The inevitable: Wipro outsourcing software jobs to US is the title of a recent InfoWorld blog entry. Remember about 4 years ago when everyone was going bonkers over outsourcing and the impact on the US economy? NPR is reporting that Indian software firm Wipro plans to open a software design center in Atlanta and expects to hire around 500 computer programmers in the next three years. That certainly didn't take very long.
  

Continue reading "Insourcing and outsourcing: two sides to the same coin?" »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When the business press dissects aspects of a technology, one can be assured of one thing: your business users are going to expect that you and your CTO deliver on the promises that the ‘case studies’ they are reading about deliver to those clients. [Note to regulars on the blog: This entry is about a few observations on SOA, not necessarily on offshoring.]

Two articles on the topic make for an interesting read. One is a Harvard Business Review (HBR) Case study (July-August'07) “Too Far Ahead of the IT Curve?” and another is the article “'SOA' Stirs a Computing Buzz” in Wall Street Journal (WSJ) today (17 Jul’07). Both write-ups are targeted at a c-level business audience though the slant of each is towards the different ends of the spectrum: the HBR case study prompts the reader to ponder while the WSJ motivates the reader to act.

Continue reading "SOA, business media and viewpoints" »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been following the trends in XML standardization with more than a bit of passing interest, especially as a number of organizations -- including our clients – continue to adopt standards for data interchange, including financial reporting and management.

Case in point is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) announcement to invest $54 million to transform the agency’s 1980s-vintage public company disclosure system, that comes as a shot in the arm to organizations looking to bring further standardization to financial reporting. SEC’s release states “By moving to interactive data using the XBRL computer language, the SEC will be joining the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, and the Comptroller of the Currency, which already require banks to use it.”

Interestingly, although the move towards XBRL is going to be a technology focused initiative -- especially for organizations with more archaic IT systems -- business leaders are also taking note. In the Feb 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review featuring “Breakthrough Ideas for 2007,” the authors focus on talking up the trend, stating “Here Comes XBRL” [HBR says that the list is free to read for all of February]

What does this mean to us? Watch out for lot more business and tech leaders asking about XBRL (remember what SoX did to IT compliance?)

Continue reading "Silver Bullet or not... XBRL is here" »

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For years, B-school students were taught about the significance of environmental and geographic location on success of business enterprises (read “Location, Location, Location”) a theorem that was essentially turned upside down by globalization and flattening world; apologies Tom Friedman.

It is interesting that the debate over “location” continues to come back in different contexts, be it “India vs. China vs. Other Country” or “Bangalore vs. Anytown” or other similar arguments. I am occasionally asked by client managers and executives on my views on Bangalore or India as “the” (read preferred) location for IT outsourcing. Case in point: James McGovern’s comment on my earlier blog is a query of this kind. “Maybe another dimension to talk about is when outsourcing is beneficial but when companies should avoid India for other countries such as Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad, etc.”

Continue reading "Value of successful offshoring ...is it still Location, Location, Location [and cost]?" »

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You may be interested in my review of ACM Job Migration Task Force report "Globalization and Offshoring of Software." Review was published in ACM Ubiquity today.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The cover story “just say know to outsourcing” in the recent issue of CIO magazine makes for interesting reading. The ideas in “3 Ways to Answer the Outsourcing Question” resonated with my thinking. The author, Stephanie Overby, says there are three ways to respond when the "O" word is uttered:

• If you have a solid sourcing strategy and decision-making framework in place and an accurate understanding of costs, service level and other considerations, you'll want to inform the CEO and let him know you're evaluating the options.
• If you're developing your sourcing strategy and getting a handle on internal and external costs, service levels, and other considerations, you want to get buy-in for that process and buy yourself more time to complete it.
• If you have not yet started to develop an overarching strategy and have little visibility into internal and external costs, service levels and other considerations, turn this into an opportunity to do so.

Continue reading "Just Say "Know" to Outsourcing.... and make sure you Know How To..." »

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)