Obama Speaks Out Against Offshore Outsourcing

Source: CIO

By Patrick Thibodeau

Obama said that as president, he "will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America."
Economists and legal advisors contacted about those comments said they are unaware of any specific tax breaks aimed at offshoring tech jobs. Instead, they said, Obama may be targeting broader tax deferment strategies, such as the ability of multinational firms to avoid taxes on profits by moving money overseas.
Joe Greco, director of California State University-Fullerton's Center for the Study of Emerging Markets, discounted the impact of tax code changes on the broader offshore trend. "Any plans for a tax code change are like trying to plug a hole in a leaky dam with your finger—to believe the U.S. government tax code promotes outsourcing is a major misconception of the fiery debate around outsourcing offshore," he said.
But Obama could have more success fighting the shift of jobs overseas through the second half of his point—by creating incentives for companies to add jobs in the U.S, said Greco. "If you want to be a magnet, you can be a magnet," he said.
Indeed, Jim Harvey, the partner and co-chair of the global technology and outsourcing practice group at Hunton & Williams LLP in New York, said state and local governments can be very active in creating incentives to retain jobs, including tying a particular number of jobs to the size of a tax break. Such incentives, he said, can make a difference for some clients. "Incentives to keep jobs on shore, targeted at the IT industry, would make a lot of sense," Harvey said.
But tax breaks to keep jobs in the U.S. don't always work. The Nielsen Co., recently gave up local tax breaks it received in Florida after it hired an India-based firm.
If Obama plans to keep giving attention to offshore outsourcing, he is hitting an issue that is having a major effect on tech workers. In what may be the largest study of its kind, involving 10,000 workers and human resources professionals across a range of occupations, researchers at the New York University Stern School of Business and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that 8 percent of IT workers in the U.S. have been displaced. The study was released last week.

Offshore Outsourcing India and Ecommerce Development in India

From: Technoinfonet

Written by wbedesignindia
Techno Infonet provides offshore Outsourcing and Ecommerce Development Solutions in a professional way with the right combination of quality, service & support. You get the highest quality; Designing work. It also offers services such as Email marketing, SEO in India.
Techno Infonet is a unique Web Design firm offering a variety of services from basic HTML Website Designs to complete E-commerce Website development. We have created and launched many of successful Websites since our origin; our designers and developers can work on your ideas and implement them on your Websites to strengthen your presence on Internet.
Ecommerce is said to be the transaction done through the electronic means with most of Internet base and some of CD-Rom catalogue also.
We have been providing offshore Outsourcing highly Complex white label service to other Web Design Services Provider in the UK, GERMANY, USA and Australia and Canada.
Techno Infonet develops innovative E-Commerce Development Techno provides the complete E-Commerce solution to get your business up and running online. Our affordable E-Commerce Website Design solutions are quick and easy to exercise. Nevertheless our highly creative web designs and Ecommerce solutions offer you a podium to present your self globally.
Techno Infonet with the base at India is a professional Web Designing Company. Our Web Designers focus on quality features of Web Design, Email Marketing and Multimedia Presentation. Company confers services such as Logo Designing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in order to enhance the overall look of the Brand.
By providing an effective and efficient customized E-commerce solution as per our customer’s requirements we try to enhance the degree of easiness in our customers, which eventually augment the level of satisfaction.
This has been provided courtesy of TECHNO – http://www.technoinfonet.com in best-in-class Website Design, E-commerce development solution, Flash multimedia designing, logo designing and thus in ultimate Corporate Identity.

Offshore Software Development and IT Outsourcing

Source: Amazines

The growing business needs and market place have increased the importance of offshore services. Outsourcing has become an integral part of businesses related with investments, foreign trade, financial and broker operations, transfer operations, currency dealing and foreign property management, web application and software development to benefit the companies from all industries and of all sizes.

It is true that software development is considered as the most technical and complex area of specialization. Many companies face difficulty while exploring possibilities for developing the right kind of software for many reasons. Offshore software development is the smartest option to get the right services at the right time. Getting affordable software solutions is the best way to minimize the risk involved in the process and to increase the profits for the businesses.

Offshore software also saves a great deal of time, which is something that most businesses lack. Also, you can save your money spend on developing and maintaining various kinds of resources and equipments. In addition, you need not to hire experts to provide the right service at the right time. In other words, in-house software development equals serious investment before benefits can be reaped, if any.

Offshore Software Development Company Contacting to the right software development company is the most economical and advantageous thing you can do to fulfill your software related needs. Besides getting the most desired services, you can easily match the prices as per your requirements. Offshore development allows you to get the useful software to be delivered rapidly and continuously, to the customers' satisfaction. Accessing to the time-effectiveness is another close benefit of agile scrums in offshore software development. It will further allow a close collaboration between developers and companies, adaptation to changing and developing circumstances. Search over the internet thoroughly to get the best results within your budgets.

The author of this article is a professional writer for Software Development services, an emerging IT company offering customized solutions including Offshore Software Development and Web Site Graphic Design, search engine optimization and flash development India for clients around the world.

Software Development India

Source: Articlesbase

Written by : Vaibhav Aggarwalit

h the development of the internet, many new areas in software development have been opened in India to offer the best for clients. Software development in India has coma a long way to satisfy the growing demands of software needs of the growing businesses. Large English speaking population, lower cost manpower and technically skilled knowledge are considered to be the base of the growth of the software development India. The destination India is becoming a hot market for getting all kinds of web solutions including creating database, making user-friendly software by using ongoing technologies like PHP and Dot net. 

The offshore software development India market has been growing at the continuous rate of 30% to give its clients total satisfaction and attractive results. In addition, offshore software development India has lead to gain considerable business margins and profitability for businesses across the world. As a result, many major corporations are transferring their work to India to get the better quality in a restricted time frame. As an attractive web solution destination, Indian IT companies have proved their skills and expertise in catering the business needs of foreign companies with their creative unique solutions.
Factors Contributing Success of Offshore Software Development India
Offshore software development India is going through its golden period. It has become one of the greatest contributors in the national development of the country. Let us look into the reasons for the success of offshore software development in India.
Skilled Workforce
India is having the world’s largest English speaking population. The country has equal number of technically skilled workforce to provide the best web solution to provide the best solution for the emerging businesses. 
Timing
Indian standard time is about 12 hours behind the timing of the U.S. and UK, where major big companies seeking applicable web solutions are situated. The difference in timing gives the advantage to finish the work on time and increase efficiency.
Government Support
Seeing the current market trend, the government has taken many initiatives that support the smooth functioning of the growing IT companies, which provide web solutions for foreign clients. 

Pressure on outsourcing

Source: Rediffnews
By James Fontanella-Khan
India's celebrated IT outsourcing industry, which contributes about 25 per cent of the country's total exports, is feeling the pinch as it struggles to deal with the avalanche effects of the global financial crisis.

The National Association of Software Services Companies (Nasscom), India's software services lobby, this week added to the gloom by downgrading the sector's export revenue growth to 17 per cent from 21 per cent for the year ending March 2009, as demand from developed markets fell.

IT executives are trying to talk down the revised growth outlook, as they argue that their companies are still outperforming other industries in India. However, this did not stop Ganesh Natarajan, the chairman of the Nasscom, from asking the government for help to stimulate growth "by extending fiscal incentives to this industry".

Mr Natarajan's demand for state aid suggests there could be more bad news in the pipeline for an industry whose corporate integrity has been questioned after revelations of an alleged $1bn fraud at Satyam Computer Services [Get Quote].

Several IT services analysts believe that a 10 per cent growth rate for the sector is a more realistic figure, as demand from the US, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of the industry's export revenue, is not going to pick up until late 2009. Industry leaders, such as Infosys [Get Quote] and Tata Consultancy Services [Get Quote], will have to be creative to outperform their expectation.

Worries grow about Obama's outsourcing policies

Source:Rediff News

By Mehul Srivastava

After a decade of outsourcing helped transform India into much of the world's back office, Indians are worried that President Obama's new Administration - and the slowdown in the global economy - will cast a shadow over one of the fastest-growing sectors of their economy.

Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan will make it increasingly difficult for US companies receiving bailout money to hire foreigners on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas. The budget the President recently presented may also make it harder for US companies that send jobs overseas to receive tax benefits.

In India, where the $63 billion IT sector makes up almost 7 per cent of the national GDP, the moves are worrying government officials. Acting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee groused about it over the weekend in an interview with CNN-IBN, a content partnership with Time Warner's CNN owned by India's TV18. "We will have to address this issue," said Mukherjee, whose ministry has spent the last five months trying to restart India's slowing economy with tax cuts and spending plans. "We are opposing protectionism, not only here but at every forum."

India needs a lot more love from Obama

Source: Shadow Foreign Policy

By Dan Twining

In 1998, President Clinton flew over Japan without stopping to spend nine days in China. This led to acute concern in Tokyo over "Japan passing" -- the belief that Washington was neglecting a key Asian ally in favor of the region's rising star, China. Is the same thing happening today -- not with Japan, destination of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first overseas trip, but with India?

The construction of a strategic partnership with India was arguably President Bush's signal foreign policy accomplishment. Decades of estrangement between the world's largest democracies gave way to a strategic breakthrough akin to President Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Senior Bush administration officials believed that India could emerge as America's most important international partner over coming decades, given India's growing capabilities and a congruence of interests in defeating global terrorism, managing China's rise, sustaining an open global economy, and securing our common values.

For its part, the government of Manmohan Singh literally put its survival on the line for the United States, subjecting itself to a confidence vote in parliament in order to move forward with the civil nuclear cooperation agreement. Few other countries -- including America's closest allies -- have passed such a test.

But signs of trouble in U.S.-India relations emerged early on Barack Obama's road to the White House. As a Senator, he offered a killer amendment to restrict nuclear fuel supply to India during consideration of the civilian-nuclear agreement, which the Bush administration and India's supporters in Congress had to work hard to defeat.

During the presidential campaign, he revealed that he had asked Bill Clinton to consider serving as a special envoy for Kashmir in an Obama administration, alarming Indians in the way that Americans might be alarmed if the European Union offered to send a senior envoy to mediate between Mexico and the United States over the status of Texas.

Candidate Obama also pledged, if elected, to push for U.S. ratification and global entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This issue, more than any other, divided the United States and India in the 1990s, especially when the United States and China -- which had helped sponsor Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs targeting India -- ganged up on India at the United Nations to press it to accept the test ban.

India frets over Obama's Chinamania

Source:Asia Times
By M K Bhadrakumar

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechen's visit to Washington this week is notable for three reasons. One, Yang is paying a return visit in a little over a fortnight of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Beijing. The intensity of the US-China traffic is indeed extraordinary by diplomatic norms. China seems to have blithely overtaken the traditional allies of the US, such as Germany and Japan.

Two, Yang's visit coincides with the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Tibet. Washington doesn't seem to be bothered at the coincidence. It is actually underscoring its current priorities in the US's relations with China. Tibet is an issue that arouses some animated passion in certain American circles. The US Congress and State Department have paid heed to these public sentiments



while Beijing on its part has duly regretted the US statements, but both sides are confident that life must move on.

Clinton made it clear during her Asian tour last month that neither Tibet nor Taiwan can be allowed to impede the serious business of Sino-US relations in the current world scenario characterized by the economic crisis.

Three, Yang's visit has been envisaged as a significant input in the run-up to the Group of 20 (G-20) summit meeting on April 2 in London. True, the US is widely consulting other countries for opinions on solving the economic crisis. But, again, the criticality of Chinese input for the US is self-evident from the fact that Yang has a scheduled meeting with US President Barack Obama.

But viewed from New Delhi
, Yang's visit assumes an entirely different color. The intensity of US-China traffic is in sharp contrast with the virtual absence of high-level political exchanges between the Indian leadership and Obama. So much so that the former director for South Asia in the National Security Council in the George W Bush administration, Xenia Dormandy, penned an article on Wednesday in The Christian Science Monitor precisely focusing attention on the subject.

Dormandy played a key role in coordinating the July 2005 landmark visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the US that led to the new US-India strategic relationship. Titled somewhat exaggeratedly - "India: America's indispensable ally" - her article made an impassioned plea that "Obama's team would be wise not to forget it [India]". Dormandy pointed out that in foreign policy, "[The] Obama administration has started with a full sprint. Between the financial crisis and events in Afghanistan, Iran and Russia, and elsewhere, it's had to. But in rushing ahead to confront one crisis after another, it risks forgetting a crucial friend: India."

India's first contact with the Obama administration has been in the nature of Foreign Office consultations, when the Indian foreign secretary visited Washington this week. Reading between the lines, the picture that emerges from the reports of the consultations in Washington is that the US-India relationship is entering a phase of lull..........


Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Outsource Software Development Using Rentacoder

Source: Articlesbase
The existence of the Internet and the facilities that this industry offers us has forever changed the way the world handles its affairs and ultimately has forever modified the way most companies conduct their businesses. Due to the Internet, companies can now have the choice of hiring people from all over the world to do some specific work that they cannot handle. This reduces costs for the company and assures it at the same time that the job will be done properly.

Due to drastic change that human resources has thereby suffered, becoming more fluid, a place where outsource software development was accessible to all people was necessary. To our delight, most people and companies nowadays solve problems that we did not even know we had. Outsource software development using rentacoder is the fastest solution companies today have. It reduces costs significantly; it assures the company that the best people on the job will satisfy their software development needs and, most importantly, the services are easy to locate due to a specialized site, rentacoder, which has a big network of businesses.

Outsource software development using rentacoder is the easiest and most convenient way that companies have these days. The times when companies had to invest a lot of time and money into training people to resolve software development problems is long gone. Nowadays, outsource software development using rentacoder is the golden solution that companies just have at the tip of their fingers. Freelance professionals from all over the world are more than ready to bid on your projects, saving you a lot of time and more importantly a lot of money, for prices can always be kept down as long as it is in both parties’ interest. Outsource software development using rentacoder is probably the most cheap and efficient method that a company can choose and when the results are more than pleasing, I believe it is the best choice that a company can make.

Because outsource software development using rentacoder involves people of different nationalities, who speak different languages, there is the possibility of problems arising because of the lack of proper and accurate communication. Rentacoder arbitration is the solution for these problems. Arbitration is the determination of a dispute by a referee, an impartial one that both parties agreed on. Whenever problems appear due to different factors, rentacoder arbitration is the solution that is offered to you. It is very important to know this aspect and to agree with it, because it is one of the terms you have to say yes to when deciding that the best solution for your company is outsource software development using rentacoder.

All in all, in a world where problems are often without solutions and you can find everything you desire only one click away, the best solution that a company can opt for in order to achieve its goals is to choose outsource software development using rentacoder. Not only time and money will be saved, but you will realize that you have made the right choice once the results start showing. Moreover, if ever a dispute shall arise, rentacoder arbitration is the solution offered by the party involved, a solution that can only be in the best interest of all people involved.

For more resources about Outsource software development using rentacoder or even about rentacoder arbitration please review http://outsource.supergloo.com

Why China for Outsourcing?

Source: Offshore-development.co.uk
By Betty Zhang
Why China for Outsourcing?

– Large Scale (presenting splendid opportunities for the potential, large domestic markets)
– New emphasis on Education System
– Aggressive plans to broaden English-speaking capabilities
– Up-to-date and growing Infrastructure
– Liberalization of laws, policies and the Government Incentives
– Burgeoning middle class
– Opportunity to be a fast follower by learning from the Indian and other leading countries` experiences, avoiding their mistakes and accelerating progress
– WTO Entry and Oversight
– Large multi-nationals already manufacture in China

Why Chinese Outsourcing Companies?– Diversifying away from existing regions in the world

– Lack of resources and/or high turn over in other countries
– CMM certifications now in process within certain Chinese companies
– Improved corporate governance, risk management and compliance
– Talent pool needed for large projects
– Favorable business environment


Finally, the reality is that the Chinese outsourcing services industry has its challenges, but is also has the devoted interest of a very goal-oriented government that has made one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Blend in China’s many other assets and reality looks quite promising.--from neoIT research of “The China Reality Check” in June 2005.

Author: Betty Zhang from www.shanghai-digital.com
E-mail: nzhang@shanghai-digital.com

Indian’s biggest body shopper stops hiring

Source: India Daily
By Satish Rai
They are in India. They are abroad. They make millions of Rupees in salary and benefits. They live luxurious life. They abused their Engineering degrees in becoming cyber slaves of the West. They fix the legacy software that no European or American like to do. Yes, these are 100 million Indian cyber slaves that are paid for their hourly work, occasionally through middlemen called Indian or western body shoppers.

India’s biggest (mother of all) body shopper is shaking top to bottom as revenue vanish and the trader owner is little interested in supporting the bad trades. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has plans to freeze its lateral hiring. According to sources, unless US and the rest of the world economies get out of depression in the later part of this year, TCS will stop all hiring and lay off 25% of its work force.

For body shoppers, it is a downward snowball. They have extensive contracts with western companies that they must honor. At the same time, they have to cut cost because of rapidly diminishing revenue and mounting bad debts. Their services will deteriorate, making revenue further fall. They will lay off more people. The cycle will go on till their owners understand in then next five years, it is a worthless business models and wrap up the company.

Outsourcing

Source: Economist.com
By Tim Hindle
Outsourcing is a term used to describe almost any corporate activity that is managed by an outside vendor, from the running of the company’s cafeteria to the provision of courier services. It is most commonly used, however, to apply to the transfer of the management of an organisation’s computer facilities to an outside agent. This transfer of management responsibility is frequently accompanied by a transfer (from the buyer of the outsourcing service to the vendor) of the specialist internal staff who are already carrying out that activity.

Outsourcing has three main advantages:

• The greater economies of scale that can be gained by a third party that is able to pool the activity of a large number of firms. It is thus frequently cheaper for a firm to outsource specialist activities (where it cannot hope to gain economies of scale on its own) than it is to carry them out itself. Some firms gain the economies of scale by taking on the activity of others, becoming an outsourcer themselves.

• The ability of a specialist outsourcing firm to keep abreast of the latest developments in its field. This has been a particularly significant factor in the area of information technology, where technological change has been so rapid that companies’ in-house capabilities are hard pressed to keep up with it.

• The way that it enables small firms to do things for which they could not justify hiring full-time employees.

The most commonly cited disadvantage of outsourcing is the loss of control involved in derogating responsibility for particular processes to others.

Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon. Companies have outsourced their advertising, for instance, for almost as long as advertising has been in existence (and J. Walter Thompson has been in business since the 1880s). Financial services such as factoring and leasing, the outsourcing respectively of the accounts receivable function and of capital funding, have also been available from outside providers for many years.

But it has grown exceptionally fast in recent years. According to one estimate, in 1946 only 20% of a typical American manufacturing company’s value-added in production and operations came from outside sources; 50 years later the proportion had tripled to 60%.
Much of the increase came from the outsourcing of IT functions. This was bolstered later by the outsourcing of other functions (such as logistics) that were in areas that themselves had a high degree of it content. Banks, for instance, began to outsource the IT-intensive processing of financial instruments such as loans or mortgage-backed securities. The savings from such moves could be dramatic. By deciding to outsource the origination, packaging and servicing of all its personal loans, both old and new, one British bank cut the average cost of processing by over 75%. In the car industry in the 1990s, firms with the biggest profit per car, such as Toyota, Honda and Chrysler, were also the biggest outsourcers (sourcing around 70% to various suppliers). Those that outsourced the least (General Motors, for example, which outsourced only 30% of its value-added) were the least profitable.

The nature of outsourcing contracts has changed over time. What started off as a straightforward arm’s-length agreement between a buyer and a supplier moved on to become structured more like a partnership agreement. In this, not only is any increase in the clients’ volume of business reflected in the outsourcer’s scale of charges, but both parties in some way share the risks and rewards of the outsourced activity.

Relationships like this vary over time and require firms to learn how to work together in entirely new ways. In the early 1990s, in a groundbreaking five-year outsourcing agreement with BP, Accenture (then called Andersen Consulting) took over responsibility for running the day-to-day operation of BP’s accounting systems. BP retained control of accounting policy and the interpretation of data for business decision-making. In return, Accenture guaranteed BP that it would reduce the cost of running the service by 20%.

Some firms have been so taken with the idea of outsourcing that they have left themselves with little to do. An American company called Monorail Computers outsourced the manufacture of its computers as well as the ordering, delivery and the accounts receivable. Only the design was left to be handled in-house.

The New US President and the reaction of the World

Source: Guardian.co. UK

Written by Peter Walker

In a night of near-unanimous praise and congratulation for Barack Obama on his US election victory it was, unexpectedly, the current occupant of the White House who expressed himself in the simplest, most memorable terms.

"What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters," George Bush said. "You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations and go enjoy yourself."

Elsewhere, the vast majority of world leaders welcomed Obama's win as a landmark moment for both the US and the wider world, while warning of the challenges the new president will face once in office.

A couple were less enthusiastic – Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, noted that the new president "will not have the same enthusiasm and momentum for this situation (in Iraq)" as did Bush – while Sudan was distinctly underwhelmed.

"When it comes to foreign policy there is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats," said Ali Al-Sadig, a spokesman for the country's foreign ministry.

Otherwise, world leaders were queuing up to offer their support. Gordon Brown praised Obama's "inspirational campaign".

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, congratulated Obama, saying it was "time for a renewed commitment between Europe and the United States of America".

Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, echoed this idea, saying she was "convinced that Europe and the United States will work closely and in a spirit of mutual trust together to confront new dangers and risks and will seize the opportunities presented by our global world".

Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, was more effusive still, despite his ostensible ideological differences as a conservative.

"With the world in turmoil and doubt, the American people, faithful to the values that have always defined America's identity, have expressed with force their faith in progress and the future," he said.

Asia's two emerging world powers offered their congratulations, although China was typically muted. The country's president, Hu Jintao, said he hoped to "continuously strengthen dialogue and exchanges between our two countries". India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was more effusive, saying Obama's "extraordinary journey to the White House will inspire people not only in your country but also around the world".

In the Middle East, both sides appeared more focused on arguing for continued support. Israel "expects close strategic cooperation with the new administration", said Tzipi Livni, leader of the country's governing Kadima party. An aide to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile said he hoped the "two-state vision will be transferred from a vision to a realistic track immediately".

Elsewhere in the region, Iranian politicians were as much celebrating the end of Bush's presidency as welcoming his successor.

"Obama's victory is ... evidence that Bush's policies have failed," one prominent MP, Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, said. "Americans have no option but to change their policies to save themselves from the quagmire Bush has created for them."

Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will remain key strategic allies for Obama, were more fulsome. The election "marks a new chapter in the remarkable history of the United States", Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani said. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said meanwhile that he wanted to "applaud the American people for their great decision".

Away from the presidential palaces, there was some more personal jubilation. Obama's relatives in Kenya erupted in cheers and singing in the western village of Kogelo, where the president-elect's late father was born, as victory was confirmed.

There was similar celebration in Obama, a small coastal town in southern Japan which has spent the past few weeks cheering on its namesake and acquiring a small measure of global fame in the process.

"I really think this is going to change the world," said Akihiko Mukohama, the signer of a band performing at a party held the mark the election, wearing an "I Love Obama" T-shirt.

New Foreign Policy of Obama and Kashmir

Source: Time World
Written by Bobby Ghosh / Washington
Indian officials may be celebrating what they believe to be their thwarting of Richard Holbrooke, the new U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they may want to hold off on the champagne. Despite the fact that India's behind-the-scenes lobbying may have helped ensure that the country was left out of Holbrooke's official mandate, the Obama Administration is unlikely to ease up efforts to pressure India to come to terms with Pakistan over their long, bitter dispute over Kashmir.

New Delhi views its success in avoiding becoming part of Holbrooke's diplomatic portfolio as proof of India's growing clout in Washington. Appearing on Al Jazeera, India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, evaded questions about the lobbying effort, saying only that relations between New Delhi and Washington had "increased substantially." But an official in his ministry told TIME that New Delhi is "feeling vindicated, because finally the U.S. has given us the respect we deserve."

The official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the campaign to keep Holbrooke out was "not personal...we just objected to being lumped into a category with two of the world's most dangerous countries." Besides, he added, "there was no way we were going to allow Holbrooke, or anybody else, become a broker on Kashmir."

The Indians were alarmed when, during the Presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly said that ending Indo-Pakistani differences over Kashmir was one of the keys to calming tensions in South Asia and winning the war on terror. New Delhi views Kashmir as a bilateral issue, and has long resisted what it regards as third-party interference. In recent years, India has sought to isolate the Kashmir issue even further, by seeking to keep it out of other negotiations (over trade and travel, for instance) with Pakistan. "The Indians are allergic to any indication of outside mediation," says Bruce Riedel, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution who served as an Obama campaign foreign policy adviser.

Pakistan, on the other hand, is keen to get Holbrooke involved in the Kashmir dispute, which it has traditionally held is central to its differences with India . President Asif Zardari, in an Op-Ed for the Washington Post, wrote that he hoped the Special Envoy would "work with India and Pakistan...to bring a just and reasonable resolution to [the Kashmir issue]."

Islamabad has long argued that the disputed territory inflames Pakistani sentiment and feeds terrorist groups. More recently, Pakistan has played the terrorism card in other disputes with India. Zardari's Op-Ed noted that the two countries are currently arguing about water from rivers that flow through both countries; Pakistan says it is denied a rightful share of the water by Indian dams. Failure to resolve the water dispute, Zardari warned, "could fuel the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism." (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable northwest passage.)

For the moment, the Obama Administration is being careful to publicly distance the Special Envoy from the region's most intractable problem. State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters on Tuesday that "it's not in [Holbrooke's] mandate...to deal with the subject of Kashmir." And the White House has also been careful to deny that India's lobbying played any role in the formation of Holbrooke's diplomatic charge; not only has it insisted that it held no meetings with foreign governments or their representatives with respect to the assignment, but it has also claimed that Obama never actually intended the South-Asian portfolio to include India in the first place.

None of that is to say, however, that the Administration is going to buy India's line that the U.S. should butt out of Kashmir. The President himself plainly believes there's a role for the U.S. to play. In an interview with TIME's Joe Klein in October, Obama said that "working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve the Kashmir crisis in a serious way" would be a critical task. The key, he said, was to "make the argument to the Indians, 'You guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on messing with this?'" Obama added that he would have to "make the argument to the Pakistanis, 'Look at India and what they are doing, why do you want to keep on being bogged down with this, particularly at a time where the biggest threat now is coming from the Afghan border?'"

So it's probably safe to say that after the euphoria of their lobbying victory has died down, Indian officials will probably feel Holbrooke's breath on their neck. Some Indian analysts are already predicting this. C. Raja Mohan writes in the Indian Express that "reworking the India-Pakistan relationship will be an inevitable and important component" of Holbrooke's plans. "Whether India likes it or not, Washington will devote substantive diplomatic energies towards the subcontinent, and New Delhi will be drawn into this dynamic."

Staffing for Offshoring

Source: Zimbio
Globals provides scratch-to-end application development and support services under its success-proven Offshore IT Staffing methodology. Globals is geared-up to take complete ownership of its business partners IT needs through the complete lifecycle - including the requirements analysis activities.

With our state-of-the art infrastructure and competent team of professional developers in PHP, .NET, Ruby, C++, etc, we ensure the delivery of solutions that work for our clients. Our globally acclaimed process allows you to quickly and effortlessly transition and monitor your IT staff from a offshore location thus allowing you to save around 70% on the IT man power costs.

In case if you already have a plan ready with you and wish to outsource only certain phases of the project then we have a right solution for you. Hire dedicated programmers, analysts and quality assurance professionals on a full time appointment basis. This arrangement is best when you are looking to either augment your existing team, have a large project that requires dedicated staff, or if you have a steady stream of maintenance and enhancements requirements for your software product. This approach to contract developers would drastically save your operation, maintenance and recruitment costs and this making it hassle free. Globals offers extremely low monthly charges for contracting our developers and with auxiliary developers at any time so that your project never gets interrupted.

All our PHP / .Net / C++ / Ruby / Java / Perl programmers have extensive industry experience and are well-versed in many aspects of software development in their expertise. They are good communicators that have showed consistency in understanding client requirements and applying their technical, analytical and creative skills to come up with business-oriented solutions not just technological solutions.

When it comes to objective planning, Globals programmers have always displayed excellent entrepreneurial skills and along with their real hands-on programming experience they’ve impacted many clients’ business bottom-line.

Benefits:

• High quality IT staff with highly competitive costs
• Utilize your in-house staff on more productive and profitable jobs
• Ensuring your contracted developers meet your set deadlines and enhancing the resources if needed with our round the clock Arbitrary Programmers
• Reduce your time on new product launches or speed up your pilot projects
• Focus on your core competencies and increase your market share
• Save on your operation and high labour costs, approx. savings up to 70%
• Save recruitment costs and time, and not to worry about Attrition
• Hassle free and easy solution to overcome complicated labour laws
• Highly proficient and professional Project Managers who will report to your team on your assignments and submit daily reports
• Contract a Developer within 24 hours notice

How will working with Globals be cheaper?

While it’s true that a talented programmer in the US will be in the higher range, the actual cost to company for every employee is substantially more. In addition to the salary, every company needs to make other statutory payments for each employee. In addition, for each role, there will be other infrastructure costs such as hardware, software, utility and space costs that get added as overheads.

In the case of our team of programmers, you will not require all services on a continuous basis. In a typical project, the analysis, architecture and design takes up approximately 15% of the time in terms of effort and costs approximately 20% of the total cost, project management takes up approximately 20% of effort and 28% of cost, and development and testing takes the remaining 65% effort and 52% of the cost.

On the whole, a 12 man month project that would take approximately a year for your programmer in the Europe or US (costing you about US$100,000) can be completed in about 6 months by a team in India, and at an approximate total cost less than US$25,000. Contact us now on sales@globalsinc.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Outsourcing of Human Resource

Source: The Hindu

Written by S. VARADHARAJAN

Outsourcing of human resource (HR) processes is happening in a big way in India and many medium and large sized organisations use the services of external consultants to take care of their HR functions.

The recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) in the organised sector is growing at 40 per cent and many organisations are outsourcing their recruitment process right from the entry level jobs.

According to Asim Handa, Country Head of Futurestep, an outsourced recruiting subsidiary of Korn/Ferry International (a premier global provider of talent management solutions), the present value of the RPO industry in India was estimated at $2.5 billion and companies such as Futurestep provide customised solutions to suit clients’ requirements across all sectors.

‘Strategic RPO’

Recently Futurestep had introduced its new comprehensive talent acquisition solution ‘Strategic RPO’ aimed specifically at the business performance needs of enterprise organisations. He said it focussed on identifying and delivering strategic impact at the business level.

According to Mr. Handa, there was a huge opportunity for Futurestep and the organisation was growing at 100 per cent year-on-year in the last three years. RPO was a major component of the worldwide BPO market.

One of the major advantages to organisations, which outsource their recruitment process, is that it helped to save as much as 40 per cent of their recruitment costs. Also, outsourcing enables the human resource professionals of organisations to focus on the core and other HR and strategic issues.

In India Futurestep has a lot of clients including earthmoving equipment manufacturer Caterpillar.

A policy agenda on Outsourcing

Source: The Free Library
Key Points

* Although the number of U.S. service jobs lost to outsourcing is currently small relative to the total work force, the fear of a seemingly limitless loss of jobs to lower-wage countries has caused widespread anxiety.

* U.S. companies dominate global services outsourcing, and India is the top developing-country destination.

* National and state legislators have introduced a flurry of anti-outsourcing bills, but corporations are mounting a strong counter-attack.

"Don't worry; they'll get better jobs in the service sector." During the last three decades of the 20th century, this was the mantra of most government and business leaders when corporations transferred auto or apparel jobs to Mexico or China. That line doesn't work anymore, since U.S. companies have started shifting a wide range of service jobs as well--from high-skill computer programming to entry-level call center jobs--to India and other lower-wage nations. This breaching of the final frontier of American jobs has caused understandable anxiety and has become a hot-button issue Noun 1. hot-button issue - an issue that elicits strong emotional reactions
gut issue

issue - an important question that is in dispute and must be settled; "the issue could be settled by requiring public education for everyone"; "politicians never discuss in the presidential election campaign.