Outsourcing
Wired, 2/04: The New Face of the Silicon Age: How India became the capital of the computing revolution.
By Daniel H. Pink
Jessica Wynne
Meet the pissed-off programmer. If you've picked up a newspaper in the last six months, watched CNN, or even glanced at Slashdot, you've already heard his anguished cry.
He's the guy - and, yeah, he's usually a guy - launching Web sites like yourjobisgoingtoindia.com and nojobsforindia.com. He's the guy telling tales - many of them true, a few of them urban legends - about American programmers being forced to train their Indian replacements. Because of him, India's commerce and industry minister flew to Washington in June to assure the Bush administration that Indian coders were not bent on destroying American livelihoods. And for the past year, he's the guy who's been picketing corporate outsourcing conferences, holding placards that read WILL CODE FOR FOOD will code for food and chanting, "Shame, shame, shame!"
Now meet the cause of all this fear and loathing: Aparna Jairam of Mumbai. She's 33 years old. Her long black hair is clasped with a barrette. Her dark eyes are deep-set and unusually calm. She has the air of the smartest girl in class - not the one always raising her hand and shouting out answers, but the one who sits in back, taking it all in and responding only when called upon, yet delivering answers that make the whole class turn around and listen.
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The New York Times, 1/29/04: The Trend of Vanishing Tech Jobs
By VIRGINIA POSTREL
MANY American computer programmers complain that they're losing their jobs to lower-paid workers in India. The trend toward foreign "outsourcing" has become a political flashpoint.
But the trend is less frightening and more promising than you'd think from either the angry talk from unemployed programmers or the scary estimates from consulting firms, argues Catherine L. Mann, an economist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.
First, the end of the technology boom, the general economic slump, and the downturn in manufacturing - not foreign programming competition - account for most job losses. Most estimates, Dr. Mann notes, compare the peak of the business cycle and technology boom with today's sluggish economy. That's not a valid comparison.
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Computerworld, 1/29/04: Siemens to trim IT budget by $999M
The IT budget cuts will take place over the next three years
Story by John Blau
German electronics and engineering conglomerate Siemens AG has embarked on a program to standardize business applications and consolidate computing infrastructure across its worldwide operations in a move to cut IT costs and increase efficiency.
The Munich-based equipment manufacturer plans to cut its current IT budget of around $4.7 billion by $999 million over the next three years, Edmundo Ruiz, vice president of corporate information and operations groups at Siemens, said in an interview this week on the sidelines of the Strategic IT Management conference in Neuss, Germany.
Under the program, developed in part by The Boston Consulting Group, Siemens is studying which business applications and hardware devices have a level of "commonality" across the company and which retain a level of "uniqueness." The aim is to achieve a higher level of commonality in order to lower the number of different software applications and hardware devices used in the company and the vendors supplying both, Ruiz said.
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Outsourcing, too, will play an increasingly important role as Siemens moves to shift the distribution of its costs, according to Ruiz. "We want mostly variable costs, which give us greater flexibility, and fewer fixed costs," he said.
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SME
C|net, 1/28/04: Study: Small businesses wary of Microsoft
By Matt Hines
Many small and midsize companies harbor some level of trepidation regarding how dependent they have become on Microsoft software, according to a survey.
A report Boston-based The Yankee Group released Wednesday shows that some 43 percent of small and midsize businesses are "concerned" about becoming "overly reliant" on Microsoft's products and services. The study focused on information technology needs at 600 companies with fewer than 500 employees.
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Security
C|net, 1/28/04: U.S. creates cyberalert system
By Robert Lemos
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday an e-mail alert system aimed at informing two groups of citizens--technical experts and the average home user--of potential online threats.
The system, known as the National Cyber Alert System, will be maintained and administered by the U.S. national computer emergency response team, or US-CERT, but it relies on the expertise of many security companies, said Amit Yoran, director of National Cyber Security Division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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Microsoft
Official Microsoft Spin, 1/28/04: Smoothing the Migration from NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003
REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 28, 2004 -- High-end golf gear maker PING Inc., winter sports equipment manufacturer K2 Sports, and Italy’s centuries-old inspective police force Guardia di Finanza don’t have much in common. But all three are among organizations that report cost savings, reduced risk, faster performance and other benefits since transitioning from a Microsoft Windows NT server environment to a Windows Server 2003 system.
More companies will be making the switch over the coming year, as Microsoft phases out support for Windows NT Server 4.0. To help these companies, Microsoft is offering a host of tools and resources, from free training courses, to reference materials and online guides, to services such as QuickStart and technology tools such as the Active Directory Migration Tool and IIS Migrator.
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