Mumbai Bombings Give Outsourcing Community Pause 248
theodp writes "eWeek reports that the big fear of offshore outsourcing customers has become a reality: a major bombing attack in an outsourcing hub. In the wake of the attack, companies are considering their resources and preparedness. Despite understandable fears, people on the ground don't seem to think these latest attacks will have a long-term effect on the growth of India's tech sector." From the article: "The terrorist attack in Mumbai--and conflict between Israel and Lebanon for that matter--raise a series of questions for companies sourcing technology globally. Do you know the disaster recovery plans of your offshore services provider? Are their plans integrated with yours? And how prepared are these providers? "
And the Difference is? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is outsourcing any different from sub contracting within your own country in this respect? Quoth the article:
Quite.
Re:Come on, guys.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they ready for it? You can't just pick any non-industrialized nation, point and say "this is where our billion dollar software project will be made."
I'm not saying smack about India [cuz frankly I've never been there] but if the region isn't ready for the business in terms of economic, academic and political stability then maybe it isn't wise to DEPEND on them for your business?
It's one thing to ADD to your team with developers from other nations, e.g. setup a firm in Ireland or HK or something. It's another alltogether to depend solely on foreign assets.
Frankly I like the idea of spreading jobs around the globe, but only if the recipients are actually qualified to do the job. And while I like beating up on the average lame india post [see comp.lang.c] I'm not foolish enough to think that North Americans are all that much better in that regard.
Tom
Re:And the Difference is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lou Dobbs Side: Americans are the only ones who should have decent paying jobs, that's the way God wants it.
Pragmatic Side: Most outsourced companies turn to shit because they hire just about anyone willing to work for low wages. Net result are shitty Engrish products that suck twice as hard as most natively built products.
The trick is to note there are many professional and smart people in the "outsourced nations". The problem is companies don't always target them. Specially since most of them move to the West anyways. What you get are the morons at call centres who delete your accounts for fun or otherwise just be bothersome.
Tom
Think about your choices (Score:4, Insightful)
Moral bankruptcy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's seems about on a par with worrying about doing business with Cantor Fitzgerald because they had an office located in the World Trade Center.
And what, exactly, makes people think that India is going to be more subject to future terrorist attacks than... well, you fill in that sentence any way you please.
Re:And the Difference is? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA: Do you know the disaster recovery plans of your offshore services provider? Are their plans integrated with yours? And how prepared are these providers?
In addition to your comment, not only did we not quit doing business in New York and London, but we didn't even change the way we do business. It is nearly five years after the Sept 11 attacks and most businesses still have no disaster recovery plan of their own. Does anyone seriously think that these same companies are concerned about whether their outsourced partners have such a plan? Sure, the companies that were in the WTC and lost huge amounts of people and equipment have probably laid out some plans. Some other people have probably been wise and seen the mistakes of others and laid their own plans. But largely, nobody has done anything to change they way of doing business. (Remember the proverb that says: "A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.")
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
So why the fuck is the bombing in Mumbai so important to
Mark me flamebait, lazy overpaid supremacist!
-clueless
Re:Home sweet home (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely right there. This is just self interested posturing, not a genuine concern. Besides which we don't usually talk about the Israeli IT industry as 'outsourcing'.
Many of the people who flame endlessly about outsourcing are the same people who flame endlessly about libertarianism and how great the free market is.
What do slashdotters tell the people whose clerical jobs are being replaced by the systems they are developing? There is a bizare doublespeak here: Outsourcing bad, automation good. Historically IT people have been really good at protecting their own job security while making everyone else's job insecure.
Given the state of the IT job market I have a hard time feeling sorry for folk being outsourced. There are plenty of IT jobs around - if you actually have the skills that are in demand. And that should not be a problem if you really are worth the prices IT people expect.
The people who have difficulty getting a new position are the folk without formal qualifications and without a depth of knowledge in a useful field. Back in the dotcom boom I came across a consultant 'programmer' who did not know C, Fortran or Java. The only 'programming language' he knew was Delphi.
Re:Think about your choices (Score:4, Insightful)
Corollary: Business puts a low value on human existence.
Silly (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, many of the export centers are not in the city center and were unaffected by this event. Knowing many Indians, those that were will be back up and running in no time flat no matter what it takes.
Now, there may be reasons to rethink outsourcing such as low productivity, higher costs, poor quality of work, and customer relation issues but this is not one of them.
The best wishes of many people in the US go out to every Indian and we stand in solidarity with the many many millions of peace loving, free citizens of that nation.
Re:Moral bankruptcy (Score:3, Insightful)
People who live and work there are wondering if they should anymore (if they even have a choice). People who do business there are wondering if they should take their business elsewhere. The people that run these companies are paid to keep the companies running, not shut down operations in protest or mobilize a vigilante strike force to kill the attackers. So yes, their primary concern is going to be the welfare of their company should they continue to have dealings in the area.
And what if there is a future IT outage due to terrorist attacks? How would that affect the world? How would that affect the companies that are subject to that outage? Would they fold? Would their employees be out of work and as such no longer able to support their families? Is that not worth worrying about? Should the companies' only focus be on the people who are dead, the ones they can no longer do anything for, or should they concentrate on the future and the ones they can still help?
As for what makes people think this could happen again here? Location, location, location.
Re:Come on, guys.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come on, guys.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right that companies should spread and test their disaster recovery and ensure that whatever one branch or department has, the others have access to in a disaster (even if its locked up in the company vaults around the world).
We have had terrorist bombings (and other more mundane disasters) come along and wipe out entire populations and companies and I am sure that there will be more, whether its India or the North pole we need to be vigilant.
*sigh* (Score:4, Insightful)
My second reaction was shame that that should be my first reaction, when I have friends and colleagues with family there.
Personally, I don't think this should have a practical impact on outsourcing decisions. India is a stable democracy; war may stir ethnic and religious resentment, but I don't see things changing overnight in a way that affects business. And even at intolerable levels, terrorist attacks have almost no actuarial significance.
On the other hand, China is frightening. It's not longer precisely accurate to call it a totalitarian state, but politically it is still a one party, non-democratic state. Mature democracies have a kind of dynamic stability, where individuals and parties change, but politics and policy don't shift that dramatically. Systems based on the authority of a single group may be superficially stable, but they are vulnerable to individuals or groups of individuals being replaced, or even just changing their minds. Put the nation under stress, and you could well have an ultra-ideological hard liner becoming supreme leader.
not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people died in New Orleans, too, when Katrina blew and washed through. Guess what? Companies are moving data centers away from there, too. Is that wrong?
Plug in "hurricanes" instead of "bombs" for where you said "future events," and you'll get the picture, i.e., "that seems on par with worrying about doing business with a data center company because their center is located in a low-lying coastal area."
It's standard disaster planning to look at evolving environmental and political conditions and plan ahead. You may not like to think about it, but it's not any more callous than insurance companies making actuarial tables. The real point to take away isn't "don't do business with country X," but "don't put all your data or resources in one geographical location." And keep apprised of what is going on in the locations where you are operating. That's common sense, Dan.
What crap! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Think about your choices (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheap labor.
"Seriously, when was the last time Iceland or New Zeland had some terrorist plot or civil war ensue."
The last time the majority was anything but fat, happy and content enough to expect a higher paycheck.
Re:Home sweet home (Score:4, Insightful)
So a question: Where in the world is politically stable, economically stable, is free (so far) of catastrophic natural disasters and as a bonus has a decent climate?
conflict between Israel and Lebanon ??? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Come on, guys.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Home sweet home (Score:1, Insightful)
I personally am not against the concept of outsourcing, but I am very much against the way it is used. The same for globalisation.
Outsourcing is currently only done to replace workers with less expensive ones. The problem is that you are replacing workers that have a mortgage, kids to put through school, high taxes, high cost of services etc., with people that don't have these costs. The worker that is being replaced has no options. He/she can't move to a low-cost location, and has no way to reduce costs. The only option is to find another job in another field of work. That is often not easy and usually means a cut in pay.
That is the same problem with globalisation in general. It's one way. The companies that make the stuff you buy can globalise, buy you can't.
This will all eventually level off when the level of prosperity rises in the countries now used to outsource to. The problem with that is that the so-called rich countries, the US and Europe, only have about 500 milliion people. The outsourcing coutries have 4 billion. They will therefore never reach our level of prosperity, but instead we will go down to their level.
The only reasonable solution to this is that most countries make stuff for themselves. India, China and Africa should concentrate of getting the skills and making the stuff they need for themselves, instead of getting skills and making stuff we need, and then shipping all that stuff around the world at great cost to the environment.
Re:Moral bankruptcy (Score:2, Insightful)
One word: Kashmir.
Not terrorism, infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, if you are moving your call centre overseas (albeit you would probably be the last company to do so). Can you trust that the telecom downtime will be negligable?
Or for any type of business. Is the local power supply reliable?
Both of the above examples are not simgle massive event but constant issues and be massively damaging to mantaining custom.
IMHO those are the types of concern that outsourcers should be taking into account when moving abroad.
Having said that I imagine that labour is pretty cheap in the Gaza Strip right now, but I dont think many companies will be moving in at the moment.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
*from* india ? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Security=cost of doing business (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and I think some of the people out there un-learned it during the studies for their MBA degree.
No, I don't think that an MBA is imnical to things or that it's the root cause of all of this- hell,
I'm getting an MBA first and then going back to finish my MSCS because of what I'm ending up doing
in my life these days. But I do think that there's a lot of goings on that just run counter to
sustainability that are going on that are very similar to the 1920's- disturbingly so. We've got a
bunch of people doing whatever it takes to ensure stock valuations stay high, solely for the benefit
of the "shareholders", never once thinking about what the value is going to be to them in one year's
timeframe. Never once thinking about the valuation being more of an ephemeral thing, meaning the
sale price of the stock and that it's not the quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even the daily valuation
that you need to concern yourself with. If you're doing that, you're not worrying about the valuation
of the company for the shareholders, because you're catering to the people that are selling
your stock or short-selling it to make a profit- basically manipulating things or gambling on things
so that they'll be richer. It doesn't actually HELP the shareholders when you do that- especially
if you're selling off the future to get the current valuation. Many of the companies out there
are doing this, helping improve the value of company for the share-sellers, not worrying about keeping
the company afloat and doing well.
I just hope we have enough regulations, etc. in place to prevent another Black Monday. We're heading
for it otherwise if we don't adjust some of our business practices with respect to the stock market- and
I just don't see this mess changing until several more millions of people are impacted by another Enron,
Tyco, or WorldCom. And with no care or concern of the consequences of their actions save the bottom line
in the short term it's just going to keep happening and happening time and and time again.
Re:Come on, guys.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you guys are used to it. But *I* wouldn't rely on a country in which it is normal to see bombs blow up once in a while to handle important data for my company. Seems logical, but I guess some will call that racism. Hence my posting as an AC. Sorry.
London, Madrid or New York (Score:4, Insightful)
The peoples of London, Madrid and New York were murdered at random by monsters who came to those places from distant lands where it is common to settle minor disputes by horrific acts of violence. The peoples of London, Madrid, and New York had learned from their history the futility of attempting to settle disputes through mass murder. They developed civilized methods of conflict resolution like fair court systems. They restrained themselves from mass murder in ways that are completely unknown to the subhumans who came to these cities from the disfunctional lands with the intention of genocidal slaughter.
The resulting actions after suffering horrible murder by the citizens of London, Madrid, and New York against the peoples who come from disfunctional cultures are not racist or discriminatory, but reasonable and rational acts of self-defense from the people who come to their cities with the intent of murder. It is sad that the good, law-abiding, and civilized peoples who came to the great cities of civilization in order to escape from the madness of disfuctional societies suffer in the West due to the actions of monsters.
But, it is the responsibility of the good, law-abiding, and civilized peoples from the disfuctional lands to seperate the monsters from their own society when they arrive in the civilized world. If the civilized people of a foreign culture can not or will not isolate and neutralize the monsters who live in their community, then they all will bear responsibility for the crimes that these monsters commit against the rest of the citizens. The entire community will suffer. That is the way that the world works.
The citizens of the cities that have suffered from the crimes that subhumans commit are not responsible for their inability to tell monsters from civilized people among those have come to their cities from distant lands.
Re:Come on, guys.. (Score:2, Insightful)
What creates terrorists (Score:4, Insightful)
The High Costs of Muslim Populations (Score:3, Insightful)
What I think... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Think about your choices (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why we should be against buisness, and for giving more power to the state. Because if there is anything that Mao, Stalin, Chowchesku, Pol Pot, Hitler, Castro (and insert any other socialist dictator of your choice) have tought us, is that when you eliminate private buisness then you have a blossoming of human rights and value of human life it truly appreciated.
Yeah, and never mind that Iceland and New Zealand are amoung the most unrestricted free-market economies in the world! And that free-markets are a relatively new and still limited in India and China, which were pretty much hardcore Socialist until the last few years. Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that the people are easily exploited in India and China because of the desperate poverty created by years of mismanaged central planning, forced labour, or rigid caste system - it is all those evil evil evil buisnessmen!
If only we were valued as much as the people in buisness-free North Korea! We can only dream!
Re:*from* india ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree - I thought the same thing when I saw the USA exporting troops to Iraq, for the same reasons...
Re:Come on, guys.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, here in the USA the really scary scenario is an improvised nuclear device (IND) attack on a critical railroad marshalling yard such as BNSF's Barstow Yard in Barstow, CA or Union Pacific's Bailey Yard in North Platte, NE, both of which are extremely critical to transcontinental railroad freight movements; the same would apply to Memphis International Airport in Tennessee for FedEx and Louisville International Airport in Kentucky for UPS. Such an attack would cripple the US economy for years.
Re:Moral bankruptcy (Score:2, Insightful)
A real democracy does not let terrorists dictate to its people.
A real democracy does not let religion become a smokescreen for land grab by neighbour. Especially when the real democracy knows that all rivers that matter to the neighbour originate from the land in question.
A real democracy should have enforced the conditions required for referendum, namely,
(a) the occupying forces would leave the land immediately as a precondition to referendum. Period. No ifs and buts.
(b) the land would be available for conducting a referendum. Right now a part of the land has been ceded to China. China is in no mood to give it back. Can you get that land back?
Under no circumstances will a real democracy allow a garrison and a rentier state, which is the epicenter of terrorism in the world, to dictate the course of action.
Re:Home sweet home (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that's not how it is ending up. Given that the cost of education in (time and money) is increasing beyond the amount that can be paid, offshoring is being used primarily to replace high quality domestic workers with those who have low initial cost but higher costs in having the proper people do it afterwards to clean up.
You must be joking if the newer products out there have any resemblance to "quality" - Lenovo's machines are using less durable materials, Dell's laptops have models that explode, and HP's status gone down to a "ink revenue station" seller that's about to get the problems of NCR's Nyberg generation (Hurd) all over it.
Whatever opportunities I'm seeing, you seem to want to keep out of reach of displaced workers and those in states (read:the Rust Belt) have unfavorable economic situations. When you have merit blind, subsidized access(by redirection of existing subsidy) education, maybe I can see there being practical opportunity.
The way it's going, it is a zero-sum game in a good sized chunk of the non-offshored world.
Offshoring as it is done now is a large mistake in need of a complete overhaul.