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| 2003/12/18-19 [Computer/SW/Languages/Java, Computer/SW/Languages] UID:11511 Activity:nil |
12/18 s.a.d.
http://money.cnn.com/2003/12/17/pf/q_nomorework/nomorework2.gif
\_ Get over it. This happens to every job, sooner or later. Even
doctors, plumbers, lawyers, etc. will eventually be replaced
by Tajikistanis or robots. New jobs are created, and overall
we all have more leisure--the average worker in a western country
works somewhere around 8 hours, 5 days a week--compare that to
100 years ago. Where's the problem? -John
\_ Big difference is that India and China are fucked up then.
Now they are reemerging.
\_ Their standards and cost of living (and wages) will rise,
it's called the free market. At the same time, their
demand for goods and services will go up. Currently, they
don't have nearly as much of a market for the sort of
stuff they're supplying "us" for cheaper as we do, hence
"we" send the work over there. That will change, it
always has. I seem to recall reading some article to
the extent that a lot of Indian companies were worried
about IT work moving to China for cost reasons, which is
pretty revealing. -John
\_ Some of us have rent to pay while your little global
free market economy rebalances itself at the expense
of the middle class.
\_ No surprises here. If you haven't already started looking into
other careers, now is a good time. Of course, I'm sure you all
think that you're one of those blessed with so much talent that
you'll never be hit by the continuing dismantling of the
domestic software industry.
\_ another career? nah, not only that, but another country too.
give up software and high tech, and what do you have left,
and how safe would those be?
\_ The source is Forrester Research, the same people who predicted
in 2000 that by 2002 the market penetration of personal video
recorders would be in the same ballpark as that of washing
machines. Keeping your options open is always good, but I don't
think the verdict is quite in yet.
\_ looks like a new career should be statistical research &
prediction, then.
\_ Five counter trends are: (1) less H1Bs, (2) fewer students in
\_ fewer
CS these days, (3) Indian and Chinese software engineers moving
back to their respective countries, (4) rapidly falling dollar
narrows the gap a little, (5) rapidly rising cost of living
in say China.
\_ and these are reasons why it will take 12 years for it to
fall 33%. Without these mitigating factors, it would fall
faster. And oh, btw, the biggest counter trend is probably
the growth of the software industry as a whole as the
presence of computers and technology permeate more and more
of every day life.
\_ This will start happening to System and Network Admins, too:
http://csua.org/u/5bg
\_ I highly doubt that this will happen. From my experience it's
practically impossible to outsource sysadmin. You still need
to be physically there when the server goes down. I've seen
many attempts at just remote sysadmining and that never works.
I also find that at least half of sysadmin is help-desk, so
unless you want users to start calling India everytime they
can't get something to work then I don't see the trend. However,
I do see the trend in possible consolidation. I think there are
many small/medium sized firms who don't need a full-time sysadmin,
and what they need is a firm which will contract out sysadmin
work. Overall, I think that there will be much less local
programming work, but there will be more computer support work.
As for programming, it doesn't come as a surprise to me. It's
relatively easy to learn programming (especially enterprise
stuff in which you typically just populate datastructures from
forms), and with the predominance of 4GL languages now in the
field this is even more so. Another high-tech area that will
be greatly hit will be layout designers for chips (place and route
software will kill off custom layout) and probably circuit
designers will just all be off-shore instead of being H1Bs.
\_ Locally outsources sysadmins? Having a helpdesk across
town is no better than having it in India. That's not going
to work.
\_ It certainly will work. Someone across town can come in
twice a week for system maintenance and be there for
emergencies. Try that with a Punjabee. |
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| csua.org/u/5bg -> www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/outsourcing/story/0,10801,88115,00.html News Story by Patrick Thibodeau DECEMBER 15, 2003 COMPUTERWORLD - IT managers have gotten very comfortable moving application development and maintenance to offshore providers. And offshore outsourcing of business processes, such as claims processing, is growing rapidly, too. But one area of outsourcing that hasnt caught on yet is offshore technical support for IT systems and infrastructure. Simply put, the jobs of technical support personnel and systems administrators who work on real-time IT applications could be done remotely over a network connection to the system. For example, if a problem arises with a CRM application, the troubleshooting and repair could be performed by workers in India. Server capacity management, network management and database and firewall administration are all functions that could be handled offshore. But today, offshore support for production IT systems is a niche market, and because its new, best practices havent emerged. Users are cautious, given that this type of outsourcing involves access to mission-critical production systems and raises new concerns about issues such as security, privacy and intellectual property protection. Plus, once a company decides to shift its application and systems support to an overseas vendor, it will lose in-house expertise in those skills. Developing Best Practices The financial services industry, which has been aggressive about using offshore IT services, recently began an effort through the Financial Services Technology Consortium FSTC in New York to develop a set of best practices for moving production and infrastructure support offshore. Outsourcing application development is fairly easythere is no access into production systems, says Jim Salters, director of technology initiatives and project development at the FSTC. Faced with the new challenges of outsourcing technical support, the FSTC is developing an implementation playbook and hopes to have an initial version completed before the new year. Guidelines that make companies more comfortable with outsourcing technical support could help increase the use of offshore IT services. But the complexities uncovered by the FSTCs effort could also have the opposite effect and slow down the market. It could lead them to the conclusion that this is a three- to five- to seven-year initiative just to come up with the best practices, Lepeak says. Standardizing Processes Financial services firms are supporting the FSTC effort because without some kind of industry standards, each bank ends up inventing their own processes, says an IT official at a major bank who asked not to be identified. The FSTC is looking at issues like how to protect confidential datasuch as trade secrets and customer informationfrom being disclosed or stolen by competitors, the outsourcing contractor or the contractors employees. Legal experts say the only way users can ensure that their interests are protected is to take nothing for granted. Penetration testing of a vendors security processes and detailed background checks on employees will be needed. Some offshore providers, in an effort to reassure United States firms about their security standards, set strict rules about what their employees can bring into work, prohibiting them from carrying in laptops, handhelds and cell phonesanything that can be used to steal a companys intellectual property. Advances in another IT arena may help make offshore outsourcing of technical support more feasible. Privacy laws have spurred the development of data-masking technologies that can disguise customers personal data. These technologies can also protect data handled by offshore contractors. Once I do that data masking, Ive opened the door to make it easier to go offshore, the bank IT official says. Outsourcing parties also need to find ways to prevent trade secrets from falling into the hands of competitors. That could mean prohibiting an outsourcer from working with competitors or finding methods to segregate the work, said Marina Gracias, deputy general counsel at Providian Bancorp Services in San Francisco, at a recent conference. Another step is to prohibit an outsourcers employees from seeking work with a competing company for a period of time, she said. Infrastructure outsourcing is possible only because of the growing reliability of global networks, which make it possible for systems to be managed remotely over vast distances. While the telecommunications infrastructure is improving in many low-wage countries, its far from perfect, and outsourcing experts say it could remain a hurdle for some companies in managing real-time systems. But as long as a financial case can be made for moving relatively routine jobs offshore, the pressure on companies to take that step will be huge. Mark Mayo, a partner at TPI, an outsourcing consultancy in The Woodlands, Texas, says 40 of the outsourcing deals TPI has been involved in this year have included some offshore component. Mayo says that may increase to 60 next year, adding that the outsourcing of infrastructure support will be one of the reasons for this growth. Network-critical Physical Infrastructure and Five 9s Availability. Complimentary Download Magic Help DeskIQ Easy-to-install, Easy-to-use. Learn how ILM: Increases utilization of existing assets Web Services Zone Visit the ZONE and get: Computerworld News, White Papers, Case Studies, and more Achieve more with the new Microsoft Office System. Business Intelligence Zone: Focused content from Computerworld and a leading technology provider Replace Rumba Free web-based Rumba replacement software Get the facts on Microsoft Windows and Linux Click here. |