Mexican Hotel Chain Outsources IT To US 125
cweditor writes "Grupo Posadas has five data centers supporting more than 100 hotels and other lines of business, but it's moving almost all of those operations to a service provider in Texas. Could cloud service providers help the U.S. become a destination for tech outsourcing instead of an exporter of tech jobs? One stumbling block: The U.S. finds itself on the receiving end of protectionist legislation in other countries that discourages use of non-domestic IT service providers, says the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."
Host in USA - get free backup (Score:5, Funny)
Only problem is getting back the copies once the cloud service crashes/vanishes underneath.
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Especially if the NSA outsources its storage to the same cloud service.
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Todays offer, host in USA, get free backup from NSA.
Only problem is getting back the copies once the cloud service crashes/vanishes underneath.
Dealing with the NSA is orders of magnitude better than dealing with the Mexican drug cartels.
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Only one will shoot you for a reason.
Cue Twilight Zone theme (Score:1)
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe...
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Blatant lie (Score:4, Insightful)
That is a misrepresentation. most country I know of which view the US cloud service warrily, do because of the privacy protection of their citizen. One cannot guarantee any privacy protection once the data is on US soil. Neitehr can one guanrantee that the US will not subponea the data. THAT is the reason some country do not want their cloud data in the US, or outside their own juridiction for what it matters.
Re:Blatant lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if one accepts the claim that the US is a privacy liability, that claim is orthogonal to whether other nations impede US services with protectionism — those two possibilities may coexist just fine. Despite this obvious fallacy the parent characterizes the latter as a `blatant lie' while citing nothing credible.
Please try not mod this nonsense up. I know we're supposed to indulge privacy outrage around here but the parent is crap. Find some other, less stupid malcontent to amplify.
Re:Blatant lie (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's not. The US government screams "protectionism" when other countries pass things like privacy laws that don't allow you to store private data outside the country precisely because of the US government's fondness for spying on everything. If you have to keep data private legally, it's a pretty bad start when a cloud provider shows up and can't explain why they won't have to hand a Canadian business' data on Canadian customers over to a US spy agency on totally arbitrary conditions.
Sometimes the two aren't related, but sometimes they are.
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precisely because of the US government's fondness for spying on everything.
Yet again another ridiculous claim without a single reference to support it.
Please point to any credible source that documents the REASON the US "screams" protectionism about data storage.
Also please point to one documented incidence of the US "screaming" protectionism with regard to other country's data storage laws.
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http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/reports-and-publications/2012-1 [ustr.gov]
With things like:
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Screaming? Hardly. Nobody ever head of this site, and nothing was done about the proposal, and the bill died in committee.
Some companies complained. Big deal. NOTHING came of it. The Government did nothing.
Next?
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You mightn't have heard of the United Staes Trade Representative, but they are the government and everyone who cares about international trade certainly has heard of them. That a foreign government has or hasn't passed a bill is irrelevant to whether the US made noise about it. In fact not passing a bill might be an indication that the noise worked.
And yes that is screaming - not to the public since the public aren't the intended audience. Not the actual publication but the talking about it.
And applying dip
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Of the Australian government succumbs to "Pressure" of a two line blub in mean-nothing publication meant more to justify the Trade Rep's budget with the front office than anything else, well, that's your problem.
Yet that appears to be exactly what you are claiming: The Australian Government rolled over in the face of this single whispered sentence and canceled their plans to require patient date to be kept in-country.
Unbelievable. Such spines!
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No the blurb is irrelevant, the report is irrelevant, but you wanted a link for your own reasons.
The campaigning at embassies and dinners so on is what they succumb of don't succumb to, but you won't see any of the details of that short of someone sending them to wikileaks.
And no I didn't claim that the Australian Government rolled. You claimed that. I don't know what happened with the legislation and don't care enough to look it up.
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precisely because of the US government's fondness for spying on everything.
Yet again another ridiculous claim without a single reference to support it.
Please point to any credible source that documents the REASON the US "screams" protectionism about data storage. Also please point to one documented incidence of the US "screaming" protectionism with regard to other country's data storage laws.
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=American+data+centre+privacy+laws [lmgtfy.com]
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parent didn't categorize anything as a 'blatant lie'. Parent didn't even use the words 'blatant' or 'lie'.
I know that starting a message in the subject line is highly annoying and far too frequent, so it's understandable that some people don't bother reading the subject lines anymore. When you're going to say that someone didn't use certain words, though, you might want to double check.
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GP is correct. It is not protectionism that keeps confidential data from here in the UK heading your way. It is clearly and specifically the fact that you have less regard for privacy than is generally expected of a developed democratic country. /. that this is because companies are obliged to squeeze every last penny penny out of their assets ore its officers will find themselves on the end of some sort of legal action. Is it true that if a company does not reserve the right to
I have been told here on
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Is it true that if a company does not reserve the right to sell my details to every advertiser it can, they will be in trouble?
Well that would only be true in a limited sense. For example, with a company like Facebook now that it is public - yes, this could be partially true. A company whose business model is collecting data and selling advertisements based on that data would not make their shareholders happy if they decided not to fully utilize that data. However, if a company had a business model of "we provide secure cloud services" (oh say like Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Azure or something like that, or even like say Dropbox) thei
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That *IS* the excuse given loudly and repeatedly. However, the real reason is that they are greedy short sighted bastards and the law here does nothing to stop them.
They are perfectly free to not dart, tattoo, tag, and radio collar each customer like a bear in the wild as long as they mumble something about hoping to attract privacy minded customers or foreign outsourcing. They can do that for the same reason they aren't obligated to maximize the week's profits in return for bankrupting the company the next
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Not really. Other countries (for example, members of the EU) do indeed have legislation that prevents outsourcing cloud services to the U.S. (that isn't really disputed), but it is wrong to characterize them as protectionism. It's simply a natural consequence of them having actual privacy protections and the U.S. having anti-privacy laws that are in conflict.
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Re:Blatant lie (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course not, they're just one such country who also happens to be a country with a pretty large IT industry so that it might actually be an issue.
Yes, Iran invades people's privacy as well - but Iran isn't high on the list of places to buy "cloud storage" from.
China does to, but while China is a popular IT outsourcing destination I haven't seen a lot of "cloud storage" stuff from their (or India) - network connectivity is significantly worse than the US after all.
The underlying issue is non-domestic storage. It doesn't matter what country it is in, you have reduced the protection of your data. Now both your local government and a foreign government can request your data (and the foreign one can also physically take the hard drives). Maybe if your local government is in the business of taking physical servers by force but not doing anything about someone refusing to supply requested data you gain something - but that seems an unlikely combination.
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One thing to consider is that those who consider the electricity grid too unreliable will put backup generators in place. In the US and western europe europe power cuts are sufficiently rare that only datacenters, hospitals and similar consider such arrangements worthwhile. In countries with less reliable power presumablly the economics shift and more people buy generators.
What you can't do anything about so easilly is expensive and/or unreliable communications. Sattelite services are frightfully expensive,
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As if the US is the only country that invades people's privacy? Nice try.
Yeah, screw those hippies in Europe. We should be like North Korea, or Zimbabwe, or Iran.
Re:Blatant lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm. I'm usually the first one to point out mistaken beliefs about US superiority in general, or certainly in terms of privacy protection or civil rights.
I can't speak for Mexico. However, I don't believe i.e. India offers any privacy protection that the US does not. In fact, in most outsourcing hotspots around South or Central America or the Pac Rim, you not only have even fewer stated protections, but you are dealing with governments that are even less, shall we say, predictable. You also have to be concerned about how safe and easy it is to do business (with i.e. an outsourcing firm, hosting company) in places where the quality of the civil courts is not so great. And, let's be real - in many nations where IT outsourcing once boomed, the court system is more a theater for bribery than a forum for the practice of law. And then there's the well-documented danger of collusion between the state and large domestic companies, or even organized crime, to a degree that even the US still blushes at (and the US does not blush at much, especially these days)...
I did once investigate whether it was possible for an American to go to India in reverse of what normally happens in IT - to study there, or take an IT job there, either for several years or perhaps to emigrate. I came away with the impression that it would be harder as an American citizen to go there, than as an Indian citizen, to come here.
I think our trade and immigration policies are often ridiculous, but especially so when, in our era of "free movement of goods," the US doesn't even extract bilateral agreements on the free movement of people, after speaking with the relevant lobbyists to determine what the visa quotas should be. :)
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Here's info on the relevant Mexican Law: http://www.chiefprivacyofficers.com/1/post/2010/07/the-united-states-of-mexicos-privacy-law.html [chiefprivacyofficers.com]
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Since the 1980s, congresspersons and staffers have been "going downtown" -- becoming lobbyistsâ"and the big draw is money.[79] The "lucrative world of K Street" means that former congresspersons with even "modest seniority" can move into jobs paying $1 million or more annually, without including bonuses for bringing in new clients.[79] The general concern of this revolving-door activity is that elected officialsâ"persons who were supposed to represent the interests of citizensâ"have instead become entangled with the big-money interests of for-profit corporations and interest groups with narrow concerns, and that public officials have been taken over by private interests.[53]
I'm sorry, what were you saying about theaters for bribery again?
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Not much shift in Jobs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, its fairly easy to get into the "cloud" business as the only barriers are financial, not technical.
Other than power, It costs about the same to run a data center with 200 cores as it costs to run one with 500 cores.
You might hire one more tech support person. Maybe. Probably not.
There will be few jobs outsourced to Texas, other than janitorial ones, because the hosting company
is only going to be running the machines, the Mexican hotel chain will still be managing them and
running their own booking software.
They are shedding physical plant, not jobs.
What they surrender is control. If the data center is accused of hosting some IP pirate nodes, the Mexican hotel
chain could find their servers are grabbed by the FBI in some heavy handed Anti-Pirate operation.
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-I'm just sayin'
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the Mexican hotel chain could find their servers are grabbed by the FBI in some heavy handed Anti-Pirate operation.
...or some drug enforcement operation, or terrorism, or tax-dodging, or anonymous/lulzsec/etc, or the next WikiLeaker, or just "National security letter. We don't have to tell you why, just hand over the servers."
I can only conclude that the countries with "protectionist legislation" that makes it hard to outsource their cloud data services to us are doing a service to their citizens.
Top 5 Reasons Not to Outsource to US (Score:5, Insightful)
Top 5 reasons not to outsource to US:
5. Can't trust those Americans with your data.
4. You'll lose control over your infrastructure.
3. Low prices are temporary and will increase as the global economy continues to balance
2. Perceived cost savings are more than offset by the additional cost of having to spec everything out to the point where you're better off doing it yourself.
1. You won't be able to understand them when you call for support.
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Top 5 reasons not to outsource to US:
5. Can't trust those Americans with your data.
4. You'll lose control over your infrastructure.
3. Low prices are temporary and will increase as the global economy continues to balance
2. Perceived cost savings are more than offset by the additional cost of having to spec everything out to the point where you're better off doing it yourself.
1. You won't be able to understand them when you call for support.
5. Gringos ladrones.
4. Gringos ladrones.
3. Gringos ladrones.
2. Gringos ladrones.
1. Gringos no hablan español.
Re:Top 5 Reasons Not to Outsource from US (Score:1)
Top 5 reasons not to outsource from US:
5. Can't trust those Foreigners with your product.
4. You'll lose control over your infrastructure.
3. Low prices are temporary and will increase as the global economy continues to balance
2. Perceived cost savings are more than offset by the additional cost of having to spec everything out to the point where you're better off doing it yourself.
1. You won't be able to understand them when you call for support.
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One reason to outsource support to India:
The support people's accent relieves tension. [youtube.com]
Re:Top 5 Reasons Not to Outsource to US (Score:5, Interesting)
That strikes me as the top 5 reasons not to outsource anywhere.
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That strikes me as the top 5 reasons not to outsource anywhere.
On Slashdot, it's the top five reasons to peddle cheap cynicism. Even when something good happens... Hey, other countries want to move jobs here! ... some people bitch and moan, and are generally just looking for any excuse to complain about the United States.
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Understood. On the other hand, I can't help but imagine it from the standpoint of the employees who have to deal with the collateral damage from their manager's decision to outsource. And there's no reason at all to believe that the pain is confined to American companies that outsource. If your company outsourced IT, it's probably gonna suck, regardless of your native language.
The solution of American companies outsourcing IT overseas is not for other countries to outsource here. That's like hammering y
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I'm actually pretty fond of the US -- good thing considering that I live here. That post was made rather tongue-in-cheek, which some people saw and some people missed.
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More importantly, it is time for America and other western nations to block access to their markets from nations that put up trade barriers, esp. illegal ones.
Page 10 and 11 of this [itif.org] is a good read on the issues.
The biggest one for America is that China requires that all computers and support be located within their border. As such, it is illegal per the agreem
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Because economies balance. Low prices cause increased demand and result in higher prices. Exporting (including exporting services like "cloud stuff") cause an increased demand for the local currency which causes it be worth more and hence prices to rise for those buying your stuff.
Yes a government can spend huge amounts of money counteracting this - but usually both halves have to play. And at some point the money runs out.
See China and the US for the rather large current example. If the US government stopp
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You forgot to mention that the US company is actually outsourcing the whole thing to India anyways...
los americanos (Score:2)
Those Americans, cant even speak proper Spanish.
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0. They will outsource IT jobs to third world countries anyway
Same staff (Score:1, Informative)
With the U.S.'s non-enforcement of immigration law, the Texas datacenter could be staffed with Mexican citizens anyway.
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Would you say the same thing if it was a Canadian company in North Dakota?
Let's be honest. You wouldn't and the thought wouldn't have even crossed your mind.
Texas has always had a large Spanish speaking Latino population. Yes, I know it is probably hard for ignorant people to understand but not all those fighting to save the Alamo were English speaking Anglos.
It is very easy to see how businesses in places that are supportive of bilingual individuals would be attractive to foreign businesses. Texas is amo
Re:Same staff (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the greatest parts of America has always been the concept of The Melting Pot. Now liberals are trying to do away with it in the name of Cultural Diversity with the unintended consequence of the loss of the hybrid vigor it produced.
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Are you implying that by allowing people who originate from a different culture to retain their customs and language, they're actually preventing the incorporation of that culture's strengths into our own?
Or are you just pissed that you have to press "1" for English?
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Please understand that the Melting Pot didn't completely homogenize cultures. The Irish still ret
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"Discourage" people from learning English? What's keeping you from learning Spanish, or Portuguese? There's a reason the USA doesn't have an official language. We largely speak English, but that's not official, it's just common. Your national identity is not dictated by the language you speak. And as far as I can tell, there's nothing in the US Constitution that says 'English or GTFO.'
Americans are brutally chauvinistic and arrogant linguists. In most other first world countries, it's common for people
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Exactly. Thank you for making my point for me. American culture is a blend, an alloy, a mixture of many other cultures. And the only way it came about is by people from many different countries sharing the way they did things with others and learning parts of what others did. What would happen if you tried to
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But a tossed salad, you'll still be a tomato at the end, no matter how much lettuce there is and whether someone adds in some cheese or crutons. Everyone gets some dressing on them, but the flavors are all individual and independent of the other el
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You're remarkably good at reading between the lines and finding things to object to that I never said, or even intended to imply. I don't care what language anybody speaks at home or is most comfortable with. I do feel, however, that anybody who lives in a country and refuses to learn the common tongue is giv
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I think that the problem here is that you're thinking about how things would work in a perfect world and I'm more interested in how things work in reality. BTW, I'm not a Conservative; I'm a moderate and a realist.
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The realist knows that aiming for the ideal gets better results than aiming for the expected result. I'm a centrist libertarian realist, but I'm not sure why my politics are relevant to my views on human rights. I don't tell people what they have to do to fit in. The realist knows that they know what it takes, and they'll do it or not. Also, it's, from a real
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Tu Quoque now? No, what I wrote wasn't an ad hominem attack, it was just an observation. Your continued insults OTOH...
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Now, earlier in this "discussion," you called yourself among other things a libertarian. If you're like most libertarians I've met, you have a great belief in the marketplace, so let's see how the marketplace really acts. Let's take two groups of immigrants from a country that doesn't use Engl
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Normally, I don't respond twice to a post here, but I happened to think of something germane. If you'd like to see a great example of how the Melting Pot used to work, watch the movie Hester Street, [imdb.com] from 1975. It takes place in New York in 1896 and the protagonist is a Russian Jew who'd been living on the Lower East Side for about three years, and was mostly assimilated. Then he brings his wife and son over. At first, of course, they speak only Yiddish, and unless you're
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"What's keeping you from learning Spanish, or Portuguese?"
Nothing. What's keeping them from learning English? If I emigrate to your country can I just keep speaking English and expect everyone to understand me? What if I'm from China? Can I keep speaking Mandarin?
"Americans are brutally chauvinistic and arrogant linguists."
And you're a brutally stupid person. How do you like that?
" In most other first world countries, it's common for people to speak two or three languages fluently..."
First, it depends on th
Dilbert (Score:5, Interesting)
Calling support... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course this get better when they call the support number and hear:
"Hello... I.T. support center. This is Joe-Bob, uh, I mean, uh, Pedro. How can I help ya'all?"
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Of course this get better when they call the support number and hear:
"Hello... I.T. support center. This is Joe-Bob, uh, I mean, uh, Pedro. How can I help ya'all?"
It's not the country. A "peggy" is a "peggy" if it's in Poland, India, Mexico or Ackerly. Outsourcing sucks not because it's foreign, but because the business model necessitates having unskilled labor manning the phones. This can happen anywhere.
Hi this is peggy hill Hola! alamo beer (Score:2)
Hi this is peggy hill Hola! alamo beer
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I think you missed the joke...
A recent trend in phone support has someone CLEARLY in Mumbai, with the standard unintelligible accent, answering the phone with "Hi, this is Steve, how may I help you today?", when I would bet you my left nut against a shiny new nickel that that fellow has never even met anyone legitimately named "Steve".
And I don't know which part to consider more insulting, that they think we mig
Re:Calling support... (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the country. A "peggy" is a "peggy" if it's in Poland, India, Mexico or Ackerly.
I think you missed the joke...
I'm living the joke. Yes, I'm well aware that the current trend is for foreigns to use names appropriate for the country they're supporting. Some don't, and conversations go more like:
"Hello this is Anantharaman, how may I be helping you today?"
"Well, Aratha..."
"Anantharaman."
"Umm, Anaratharam..."
"Anantharaman"
"I'm just gonna call you 'Fred', ok?"
The hardest part of a service call should not be communicating with the helpdesk.
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Compare to Japan where, when requesting customer support from. say Microsoft, it's perfectly rational and in fact customary to refer to employees as "Microsoft-san" and the customer is always "Okyaku-sama", sorta like "Honorable Client".
If the representative is called Anantharaman or John, he is going to be "mister" for me (or miss or ma'am). No need to fake a name that is not necessary to begin with.
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You're *really* talking to the wrong person. I'm not just a hapless customer sitting in a trailer park with a broken computer. I've been all over India, and work regularly, in person, with people from that part of the world. My real name is one syllable (although I'm told it's a common dog's name in Japanese, a source of amusement I'm sure) and people who have never heard my native language can usually get it after two or three gos. I can pronounce foreign names better than most Americans, and even I am
They're taking our jerbs! (Score:1)
So eventually will emigrants from the USA also be taking over the landscaping jobs?
Indian Call Center company bought a U.S. one (Score:3)
Global Outsourcing Example (Score:3)
I am signed up for a Japanese company that outsources weird international requests to translators all over the world. Whoever is qualified, no matter where they are in the world, will do it. I've translated documents for topics ranging from industrial refrigerants on shipping vessels to the future of feminine hygiene products in India.
(Globally, feminine hygiene product makers are excited about the huge emerging market of India. But for now, most Indian women have never heard of a tampon and think that they have a horrible cancer that causes them to bleed every few weeks. Married couples may have no idea how to make a baby, and consult witch doctors.)
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Those product makers might want to research this guy and re-evaluate their business model.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-tampon-king-who-sparked-a-period-of-change-for-indias-women-7897093.html [independent.co.uk]
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I have done a few jobs for them too; some of the topics are really quite interesting (contents of self-help websites, quite a few pages from ehow.com, caribbean resort guides, etc).
crime (Score:1)
A lot of Mexican businesses are moving to the U.S., especially here in Houston, because of the rising crime rate in Mexico.
in-sourcing (Score:1)
I remember reading in Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" that the US always in-sourced more jobs than we ever out-sourced. And that all of the negative media against out-sourced jobs was misguided and uninformed. Maybe this is the case after all?
Trickle vs a tsunami (Score:2)
IT jobs are *flooding* out of the US. Every now and then a few pitiful jobs come to the US. And some bozo makes a huge fuss over it.
Grupo Posadas owner hates Mexico (Score:1)
First, He led Mexicana (one of the national airlines) to bankrupcy:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/04/business/la-fi-mexicana-bankruptcy-20100804
Then he suggested that the word "Mexico" to be dropped as a brand for tourism. And finally, Grupo Posas is in serious financial problems.
I say don't take anything from this guy as an example of good business practice.
Non Sequitur (Score:2)
First, He led Mexicana (one of the national airlines) to bankrupcy:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/04/business/la-fi-mexicana-bankruptcy-20100804
Then he suggested that the word "Mexico" to be dropped as a brand for tourism. And finally, Grupo Posas is in serious financial problems.
I say don't take anything from this guy as an example of good business practice.
Be that as it may
1. There is no claim that says what Grupo Posadas is doing in this particular case (or in any case in general) is a good business practice.
2. The discussion is about a foreign firm moving most of its IT operations to a US-based cloud provider, and the implications therein on US services and/or data privacy.
I know this is /. (where argument consistency/coherence means squat) but c'mon.
More on topic, when companies "move" their "IT operations" to US-based cloud providers, it simply me
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"Could cloud service providers help the U.S. become a destination for tech outsourcing instead of an exporter of tech jobs?"
My comment is aiming this part. Grupo Posadas hasn't show they can make good business decisions lately, and their move shouldn't mark as a trend for foreign companies moving operation to the US.
"Furthermore, it would not outsource it, say, to India or the Philippines because of language barriers."
I aknowledge only 10% of the Mexico population speaks English, but it's exactly that perce
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I don't think Gaston Azcarraga hates Mexico any more than Mitt Romney hates the USA.
They just make decisions based strictly on their own bottom line, and the shareholders, the workers, and the customers can all go screw themselves.
Wouldn't be possible from Europe (Score:2)
As it has been proven that Safe Harbour really isn't, any EU organisation that uses a US data provider is potentially on their way to a violation of Data Protection.
Not that that matters much, the Irish Data Protection people have already shown comprehensively [europe-v-facebook.org] that that isn't a real problem :)
If you want to keep things private, don't post (Score:1)
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