Outsourcing
Fortune, 12/29/03: Peter Drucker Sets Us Straight
The 94-year-old guru says that most people are thinking all wrong about jobs, debt, globalization, and recession.
The inefficiency of knowledge workers is partly the legacy of the 19th-century belief that a modern company tries to do everything for itself. Now, thank God, we've discovered outsourcing, but I would also say we don't yet really know how to do outsourcing well. Most look at outsourcing from the point of view of cutting costs, which I think is a delusion. What outsourcing does is greatly improve the quality of the people who still work for you. I believe you should outsource everything for which there is no career track that could lead into senior management. When you outsource to a total-quality-control specialist, he is busy 48 weeks a year working for you and a number of other clients on something he sees as challenging. Whereas a total-quality-control person employed by the company is busy six weeks a year and the rest of the time is writing memoranda and looking for projects. That's why when you outsource you may actually increase costs, but you also get better effectiveness.
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ZDNet, 1/20/04: IT industry watches Iowa
By Declan McCullagh
Democratic presidential candidates have remained relatively quiet on technology, but as primary season gets under way, the "offshoring" controversy could provide a catalyst to raise the profile of high-tech concerns in the campaign.
The flow of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas has been a recurring theme of the Democratic debates leading up to Monday's Iowa caucuses and next week's New Hampshire primary, in a jab at President George W. Bush. As a result, lobbyists are closely tracking the positions of Democratic candidates on offshoring, which many companies argue is necessary to preserve their competitiveness.
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C|net, 1/20/04: On the outsourcing hot seat
By Ed Frauenheim
Nandan Nilekani is at the center of one of the most controversial topics of debate roiling the tech world: Overseas outsourcing.
As co-founder and CEO of India-based information technology services company Infosys Technologies, Nilekani is spearheading the burgeoning movement to shift IT work offshore that has corporate leaders seeing green and U.S. tech worker advocates seeing red.
Market research firm IDC recently estimated that by 2007, 23 percent of all IT services jobs will be offshore, up from 5 percent in 2003. The figures refer to IT work done for U.S.-based companies.
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Computerworld, 1/20/04: 10 Questions to Ask a Managed Security Service Provider
Story by Matt Hamblen
Before signing on the dotted line, experts suggest asking MSSPs these questions:
1. How do you take raw data from the network and correlate events to determine whether an attack is under way? Do you use off-the-shelf tools or your own technology?
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IT Management
Business Week, 1/19/04: Commentary: Why High Tech Has To Stay Humble
The industry can't forget the key lesson of the lean years: Put customers first
Imagine Ralph Szygenda's surprise. The General Motors Corp. (GM ) chief information officer strolled down the hall at headquarters in Detroit a few months ago and discovered Steven A. Ballmer, chief executive of mighty Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ), crawling under the table in a conference room and plugging in PC monitors -- like some high school audiovisual nerd.
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