An appreciative and encouraging blog on articles and news details related to IT Outsourcing, Offshore Outsourcing, Offshore Software Development, Managing Offshore Projects and Teams
Source: webraydian Written by Merilin For all websites to receive traffic it is a must to go in for SEO Canada, Internet Marketing Canada is become very popular with all website owners that expect quality visitors and sales from their website. It is also important to have a search engine friendly and user friendly websites. Know more about search engine friendly design read further.
3-D Layer
Using the z-axis positioning you can layer objects on top of each other. If you position multiple elements at the same x and y coordinates, each new element will cover up the earlier elements.
To avoid this, z-index higher or lower. In the following you will notice how by using the z-index two lines of text with approximately the same absolute location are placed on the processing of search engine optimization and web designed page
Text style commonly used text properties have been covered here some of these may not work Netscape so before you implement it in your web page please crosscheck in your web browsers. Using these properties you format and space out your text Letter-spacing
The letter- spacing property you to adjust the amount of space between letters in your content. The default is spacing.
Text-align
The text-align property allows you to to adjust the text alignment of your content. You can align to the left, right, center or justify.
Text- decoration
This property lets you attach features like underline, line-through, overline or no line at all to text .it is most often used to remove the underlines from hyperlinks.
Similar to the dynamic features, which we covered in the previous section, style sheets too are not supported at the same level by Netscape communicator and internet explorer. Their support varies in degrees, so the same code may or may not appear in one or the other of these browsers
Web Server
Till now you have been reading about ways to enhance your web design pages using html, JavaScript or dhtml; in this we will be doing something different. We will cover web servers and how they are used to put web sites online.
Web servers are a very important component of the internet. They are basically program application that resides on a machine hooked on to the internet. Whenever a request is received from a web browser for a file then this program application located the file and sends it back to the browser to be displayed. If you recall, web servers and web browsers communicate to each other using a protocol called http.
Apart form just displaying files to the browser, web servers also perform file management, execute cgi script , p[process forms , authenticate data and perform security checks .in this chapter you will also read about locating a web server and the process and sons of setting up your own web server.
Locating a web server
Once you have finished with you web site development you need to find a web server to host your web site. There are some ways to go about this task .it is a simple task provided you have access to internet. If you are accessing internet through your college or work place then it is best that you inquire with your office for allowing you to publish web pages using their web server. All you need to do is get in touch with the system administrator or the webmaster. If you intend to publish your site on an independent web server then all you have to do is search on the web fo web sites which rent out web space.
Merilin Hooposhy is an Experienced SEO and Internet marketing Expert Currently with SEO Canada Company Sempro. Search engine optimization Canada Firm. Internet Marketing Canada is necessary for all websites that expect good traffic.
Software development, including stand-alone applications, network applications and web-based sites and business applications can now be done easily and inexpensively offshore. The focus of this article to discuss some of the background behind outsourcing and offshore software development, and why you may wish to consider offshore software development for your future projects.
Here's what we'll look at:
Outsourcing, offshoring and body shops and the differences
Myths about offshore software development
Global factors impacting the software development industry
How the offshore software development process works
Benefits of offshore software development
Best types of projects for offshoring
Mitigating the risks of offshore software development
Why offshore software development in Russia?
Action Plan: Your first offshore software development project
Outsourcing, Offshoring and Body Shops and the Differences
Outsourcing
Unless you've been hiding under a rock someplace, you have no doubt heard of outsourcing - and, have very likely been directly affected by it. Perhaps your job was 'outsourced'. In some cases - you become the 'loser' - having your job given to some local competitor - in other cases, you may have become the 'winner' - being able to continue the work you've always done, but under your own company now separate from the company you formerly worked for.
Offshore Software Development or "Offshoring"
The term "outsourcing" can also be extended - in cases where the work is now to be done outside the borders of your own country. A new, and popular term for this is called, "offshoring".
Outsourcing or offshoring in their own rights are not 'bad' or 'evil' - they are simply a way companies can gain two benefits that may be critical to their survival:
Leverage cost reductions - by taking advantage of lower offshore labor rates or economies of scale for both local and foreign firms, and;
Core competency focus - meaning that companies outsource work outside their area of core expertise. For example, if your company makes tires - does it make sense to develop a huge IT shop that develops complex software and web sites? No - you focus on what you know best, which is to make tires, and let outside experts take care of the IT problems.
Offshore Software Development, or OSD, is not new. Companies throughout North America have been using developers in Israel and India for over 20 years with excellent results and high ROI.
Although you may not hear much about it - many of products developed and marketed by some leading American companies are, in reality, developed abroad, or developed by foreign workers employed locally.
What has happened in the past five years that has really brought these issues to the forefront is the incredible popularity and ubiquity of the Internet and general telecommunications infrastructures even in 'developing countries'. This has served as 'the great enabler' of a new 'global economy' - making it almost effortless to both buy and sell products and services electronically.
"Body Shops"
The term "body shop" refers to a local firm whose working staff are temporarily imported foreigners - usually working on some form of 'temporary' or 'short-term' visa, like the American H1-B class of visa.
Body shops have in many cases earned the reputation similar to the old 'sweat shops' - where foreign workers are made to work extended hours for much lower pay then comparable local workers.
In theory, there are regulations in place to ensure that 'body shop' employees are paid typical local salaries for their work, workers enter the country legally, and receive the same benefits as local workers - however, in reality, there are enough loopholes in the laws so that this is seldom the case. Hence these shops operate locally, but at significantly lower prices than local shops.
Companies often go into outsourcing expecting to retain control of how the particulars are carried out. Tempting, yes. But it's a big mistake. Forcing the outsourcer to do it your way prevents your hired gun from doing what it does best—leveraging its own experience and hard-earned best practices. "Outsourcing is the transfer of ownership of a process to a supplier," Everet Group's Bendor-Samuel says. "It's different from consulting, where you own the problem but pay people to try to help you fix it."
One company that Bendor-Samuel knows of outsourced management for all of its desktop computers to EDS. Rather than letting EDS own the process, company executives insisted on retaining control of details such as exactly how many people should be on the project and which equipment they should have. "It was a very unhappy situation, because EDS was prevented from using its best practices," and the customer was frustrated by EDS's attempts to take more control of the situation, Bendor-Samuel explains. Both sides ended up wanting out, which was an expensive proposition for the customer.
Don't Bet on a Dark Horse
It's tempting to choose an outsourcer with an alluringly low price. But remember: Many of the new outsourcers have unproven track records and aren't as stable as the companies that have been around for years rather than months.
And picking a loser can have excruciating consequences. Just ask Fred Eisenberg, director of information security for Mount Sinai New York University Health, in New York City.
Two years ago, Eisenberg elected to outsource remote Internet access for the group's 4,000 physicians and other personnel. The provider he chose was new to using remote Internet access in the health-care industry but said all the right things about capacity and reliability.
Talk turned out to be cheap. The outsourcer, whom Eisenberg declines to name, stumbled badly in its performance. The service was frequently down, and the doctors—who had never had remote Internet access before—became frustrated with the long connection times. Not surprisingly, new subscribers to the service stalled at 420 out of a target audience of 4,000. When the provider abruptly decided to leave the business, Eisenberg had just 11 weeks to find a new provider. The biggest mistake they made, Eisenberg says, was initially going with a provider that did not have an established track record in his industry. "[Next] time around, we knew to look for a company that had some history in the field," he says. After an introduction via another business partner, Mount Sinai settled on Aventail of Seattle.
The take-away message from these tales of woe: When it comes to outsourcing new technology, proceed with caution. You may think the outsourcers have all the answers, but too often they don't. You'll need to weigh for yourself the risks of outsourcing a new technology versus holding off on implementing that technology. But when outsourcing is your only choice, avoiding those common mistakes will save you from a painful learning cycle.
Traditional outsourcers often try to persuade companies that only a long-duration agreement justifies the high up-front investment needed to provide great service. A eminent writer rightly says "The suppliers are always looking for five- and 10-year contracts, but do we have any idea where e-commerce will be in five years' time? How can we contract for it if we have no idea where it's going?" Don't be swayed, he warns. Because both business and technology change so rapidly, it does not make sense to have an agreement longer than one or two years.
Long-term contracts can also act as a disincentive for good service, because outsourcers may grow complacent without the hovering threat of a canceled contract. For example, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts discovered that a decades-long relationship with Plano, Texas-based EDS was a recipe for lost money and internal dissatisfaction. The company had signed its first deal in the 1970s, when it outsourced its mainframes. Throughout the years, the contract grew to encompass the installation, maintenance and support of its desktop PCs. In the end, EDS had 450 IT people working onsite, while Blue Cross had 150.
When Mark Caron came on board as CIO, he discovered that his new "The contract is the most important part of the outsourcing relationship. If it's not in the contract, you'll find it hard to do."-Alison Smith, former VP of infrastructure, Myspace employer was actually losing money on the outsourcing deal—all because it just re-upped the same contract every five or 10 years without reviewing what had changed through the years. The result? "IT was our largest budget area in the company," says Caron, who has since left Blue Cross. In fact, because the outsourcing agreement failed to tie PC maintenance pricing to current market rates, the insurer's IT costs were two-and-a-half times what the rest of the industry was paying—and there was no end to the cost increases in sight. Hog-tied by the contract, the insurer had to charge higher rates for its policies just to keep afloat.
After a protracted battle with the outsourcer, as well as with internal management, Caron managed to restructure the contract. There would be no more automatic renewals of 10-year contracts, and he made sure to build in items, such as benchmarking provisions and credits for unused bandwidth, that tied the outsourcer's fortunes more closely to those of the insurer. Many of the ills that befell Blue Cross could have been avoided if its contract period had been shorter. In most cases, newer technologies—such as an e-commerce website or a virtual private network for remote access—should merit short agreements. That way, if the provider's technology becomes out-of-date, if pricing drops much more rapidly than anticipated or if your needs change radically, you won't be stuck. Things are simply changing too fast to be able to strike an intelligent deal that far in advance.
Surprisingly, contracts are frequently vague about exactly what the outsourcer's responsibility is versusthe customer's. Without a patrollable boundary, neither side knows with certainty what it should be doing. The result: Each side blames the other when things inevitably don't get done. The big problem seems to occur when businesses think that outsourcing obviates the need for any kind of corporate technology strategy. Blue Cross's Caron discovered that very thing when he walked into the contract from hell. "People here thought [the outsourcer] was going to do everything, but it could only do so much and had only so many resources," he says. "Without an internal IT strategy to drive it, [the outsourcer] was faced with a no-win situation." Because nobody took charge of strategy, the result was a sluggish operation operated with minimal oversight. The outsourced IT operation was unresponsive to business needs to the point that it eventually threatened the company's ability to compete.
Don't Neglect to Measure Success (or Failure)
Parties to an outsourcing agreement often fail to set the parameters for measuring performance simply because it's a difficult and time-consuming task. The results can be disastrous, says Alison Smith, vice president of infrastructure at the now-defunct dotcom Myspace (previously known as FreeDiskSpace.com) in San Francisco She speaks from bitter experience. Her company formed a relationship with Andover, Mass.-based NaviSite to manage the day-to-day operations of its website. At first, Smith says, the relationship was practically a love fest. "Everyone was pals and friends and everyone just wanted the relationship to work," she relates.
But things grew difficult as Myspace took off. The dotcom started with two servers and 10 megabits of bandwidth but quickly needed eight servers and 100 megabits of bandwidth, and was adding 10 gigabytes to 12 gigabytes of storage per day. NaviSite found it increasingly difficult to handle the growth, and Smith grew dissatisfied with NaviSite's performance.
That's when it became painfully clear to Smith and her colleagues that they had been operating without a contract that spelled out performance measurements. Everyone had been moving so quickly at the beginning of the deal and there was so much goodwill on both sides, it was hard to believe a stodgy legal document would be required. Consequently, when things started to break down, there were no guidelines to help define performance and satisfaction levels.
"The contract is the most important part of the outsourcing relationship," says Smith. "If it's not in the contract, you'll find it hard to do." When she and her cohorts signed with their next outsourcer, which turned out to be Intira of Pleasanton, Calif., they insisted on an ironclad contract, complete with service level agreements that link financial penalties to subpar performance, and with detailed security and capacity provisions. Smith suggests that customers define acceptable levels of performance in terms of business relevance. For an e-commerce site, for example, a good metric would be the online customer conversion rate—the rate at which online browsers become online buyers.
Farming out the best work will hollow out your organization.
Many organizations are a shell of what they once were or a shadow of what they could be, because they give the best work to outsiders. I don't think anyone intentionally out sources the best work—that is, the most important projects and the critical business relationships—but it happens all too often.
Correctly applied, outsourcing is a lifesaver in navigating the changing seas of business and technology. Fortunately there seems to be an endless supply of contractors and consultants. The clients have plenty of experience in outsourcing. In fact, about half of their personnel work for somebody else, on average.
That last thought always gives me a chill. At the end of the day, half of their people don't work for them—they work for somebody else. Those employees are working to achieve another company's long-term vision and are part of somebody else's culture and career development plan. This reality hit home years ago when, as an executive at PepsiCo, I hired a consultancy to manage a PeopleSoft implementation. The software was new and the market demand for experienced project managers was high. At a critical point, one of the consultancy's partners informed me that he needed to reassign the project manager to an apparently more important or better paying client. I pulled out my PepsiCo card, but the partner didn't seem to care. In the end I won but only by hiring the contract project manager away from the consultancy.
The incident taught me that a leader's success rides on the back of a few key employees. Those are the people who know your business and your systems, who have formed good relationships with your customers and vendors, and who are disciplined enough to see things through. To do outsourcing right, you had better know what you wouldn't give away. You need to define an "insourcing" plan that identifies the work critical to your company's strategic intent.
Insource the Important Work Most of us would agree that subject to real-world constraints, the following roles and capabilities should not be outsourced:
Strategic applications and technology planning.
Investment, financial, HR, project and vendor management.
People with in-depth knowledge about existing business, applications and technology infrastructure.
Senior, customer-facing relationship managers.
The real-world constraints that force us to outsource more than we would like include missing skills, inadequate resources and a lack of organizational mass necessary to maintain a capability internally. The critical mass problem forces some companies to outsource virtually all IT functions. But in compensating for limited resources, many managers go further than is healthy for their organizations. Project work, which is variable by nature, goes to contractors, while internal people end up doing only support work. Since project work is generally the best work, in terms of strategic impact and creativity, employees who value this work will leave. Those who remain will do a good job running the day-to-day tasks but will be unable to lead a major change.
When consultants are running the show, you've reached the dark side of outsourcing. When the interests of your company and the service providers diverge, you'll pay the price. To find out whether you're entering the dark side of outsourcing, look for the following clues:
Most of your employees are performing maintenance and support work.
Strategic, risky and large projects are consultant-led.
Your employees are being managed by consultants.
Consultants are driving one or more of the critical governance processes—strategy, architecture planning and investments.
Your customers are interacting with consultants more often than with employees.
Companies get into trouble when they do not draw hard lines around work that should not be contracted out. An insourcing plan will ensure that your folks remain in charge, while contractors will be used only as additional arms and legs or for expertise when your organization is too small to hire and retain the best.
There are many ways to outsource safely. If you are missing important technical expertise, ensure that your people work side by side with the consultancy's technical gurus. If your group lacks management expertise, partner the contract project manager with the employee whom you want to lead the function in the future. Be sure to explicitly identify skills transfer as a key objective of the relationship with your outsourcer.
Short-term needs can be a staffing nightmare, but don't take the easy way out. Rather than viewing contingent labor as a stopgap, use outsourcing to free up your people for development. If you need to staff a critical project quickly, transfer one of your workers from a less important project to lead the new one. Give the less important task to a consultant—teamed up with a rising star whom you wish to develop. Set a date by which the consultant will leave or transition to a purely coaching role. If you are (rightly) outsourcing support work, such as maintenance, ensure that the contractors report to one of your analysts. Supervising support workers is a wonderful developmental opportunity for analysts who want to move into a project management role.
Concentrate on the Core Employees Once you have decided what work should not be outsourced, give some serious thought to how you will retain (or, if necessary, attract) your best talent. In The Age of Unreason (Harvard Business School Press, 1991), management philosopher Charles Handy identifies three groups of people in organizations. The first is the professional core, essential to your company's success. The second group, the flexible labor force, performs essential activities on a part-time or temporary basis. The third group is the contractual fringe, which does all the nonessential work. Each of these groups has different expectations and should be managed differently.
Members of the professional core are motivated by working in flat, collaborative organizations where they are compensated based on the group's results and given some kind of career promise. These are the people you want to retain. This is where you should invest your leadership energies.
In my executive coaching practice, I am amazed at how often I know more than my clients about the interests and goals of their key employees. One of my clients was considering a transfer of one of his rising stars to a new position, but he was unaware that she ultimately wanted to start a small business in an area entirely unrelated to IT. With this knowledge, he was able to identify internal positions that would help her develop the skills necessary for success in a small startup. The concept of matching responsibilities with interests, known as job sculpting, requires that managers do more of what I do as a coach. Managers need to spend one-on-one time discovering what their people like and dislike about their jobs, helping the employees become aware of their underlying interests, and understanding how to align the interests of employees with that of the company.
Managers should spend less time on the other two groups, according to Handy. The flexible labor force is motivated by fair pay and the flexibility to balance work with other interests. Members of this group may have transitioned from the professional core and may move back to the core if their priorities change. You can use skills training to keep this group up to speed. The contractual fringe is paid for results. It is important to compensate members of this group fairly and specify up front the mutual expectations for the relationship. Don't bother trying to get them to affiliate strongly with your organization; they work for somebody else.
Focus your insourcing plan on the critical work and key employees in your organization. Think about how to deepen your relationship with these few people—to touch their hearts as well as tap their skills. In Handy's words, "These are the people who are essential to the organization. Between them they own the organizational knowledge which distinguishes an organization from its counterparts. Lose them and you lose the organization."
It was 25 years back when the first corporation thought of this bright idea of farming out part of its IT department to somebody else. They called it time-sharing, and it was supposed to cut costs dramatically. These days, the hot money-saver is off-loading Internet-related functions to application service providers (ASPs) that rent out software applications. Between the two, businesses experimented with giant agreements that saw entire technology operations shift to outside companies.
No matter what the current term, the basic concept is outsourcing. And seeing as we've had a quarter century to work out the kinks, one would think that by now it would be a trouble-free, fill-in-the-blanks process.
But that would be wrong. Outsourcing, it seems, is one place where it's a snap for history to repeat itself—with some calamitous results. While many companies have undoubtedly saved money, several others have seen costs spiral, quality plummet or, worst of all, IT operations crash. Why is it that this seemingly simple idea has spawned so many disaster stories?
The plain truth is that outsourcers commonly repeat a painful learning cycle every time a new technology gets outsourced. Because it can take years for both outsourcers and their customers to learn a technology and understand how best to manage it within the scope of the outsourcing agreement, they often make mistakes that have long-term effects. For example, when technology is new—such as customer relationship management and supply chain management—outsourcers often under price their offerings to such a degree that they either go out of business or are forced to cut back on service. Customers, who mistakenly think that outsourcers are the experts in any technology, often do not know how to protect themselves from bad deals. The importance of Vendor Evaluation can not be overemphasized.
When outsourcers began to offer the maintenance of desktop PCs for the first time, a multitude of outsourcing companies sprang up to meet this demand. Eager for customers, they priced their services too low. A shakeout followed, leaving only a handful of companies and a host of dissatisfied customers. But as both customers and vendors gained experience with how to best structure desktop deals, satisfaction levels rose.
It is noticeable that so far, the ASP phenomenon is following the same trajectory. A year or two ago, new ASPs were appearing overnight. Today, the ASP consolidation is well under way as both businesses and customers get smart about how to handle these new projects. In the meantime, mistakes happen.
Given the high margin for error, why would anyone outsource a new technology? Simply put, you may have no other choice. Cycle times are shorter than ever, money is tight and skilled personnel are hard to find. For many companies, outsourcing offers an attractive path around these constraints. But regardless of why you outsource, mistakes happen—and often enough for us to compile a list of five classic outsourcing blunders. Here's hoping that you can learn from a host of others' missteps.
Source: SD net Australia By Steve Ranger, silicon.com India may be the best known destination for offshore contact centres but "nearshore" countries such as Egypt also want to get a piece of the action.
Following India's success, many countries such as Argentina, Egypt, Hungary and Mexico are marketing themselves as destinations for companies looking to cut costs or access particular language skills.
The new competitors are appearing at a tricky time for the Indian market, with a consumer backlash against Indian offshoring combined with increased costs and attrition rates of 75 to 80 per cent in some Indian call centres.
While India is going to remain by far the largest market -- with 169,000 offshore call centre staff by 2010, up from 95,000 last year -- smaller players will increase their visibility, according to analyst Datamonitor.
Datamonitor senior analyst Peter Ryan said: "If you have complaints about offshoring, nine times out of 10 they will revolve around India. This is unjustified but it seems to have become a flashpoint for concerns about offshoring."
By 2010 there will be 10,700 outsourced call centre agents working from Eastern Europe, up from 3,700 now. Growth in North Africa will jump from 7,800 agents last year to 23,000 in four years' time, largely driven by Egypt boosting its market presence.
Speaking at the Offshore Customer Management International Conference in Cairo, Ryan said: "Egypt's government has been very proactive in lowering the corporation tax rates." And with Egypt only a four hour flight from most of Western Europe, Ryan pointed out: "That's a lot more compelling than getting on a plane and flying for 16 hours [to India]. If you are a busy executive you don't have the time for that and there's a cost."
But concerns over regional stability may put some companies off, as well as a perception that corruption is still an issue in some nearshore countries, he said.
There are also other countries trying to get noticed by companies looking to offshore -- including Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia and Senegal.
Latin America and the Philippines continue to be attractive destinations for US companies looking to offshore contact centres, Ryan said.
Another region gaining some interest is China but Ryan said the contact centre expansion there is likely to cater for the increasing number of Chinese consumers. And he added: "The Chinese business environment hasn't been as solid in terms of cutting through red tape as you might see in India or Egypt."
Source: Wise to social issues Outsourcing has had a negative impact on the American economy. Economists and government officials who advocate the outsourcing of jobs to other countries stress the overall benefit and long-term advantages of this practice for the American economy. Many who have lost their jobs to foreign competition often learn that the creation of higher paying jobs to replace ones that are lost has not occurred. Providing further training and unemployment benefits to workers until they find further employment is expensive. Outsourcing further contributes to a weakening of the economy because it contributes to the trade deficit and exports the American knowledge base to other countries. Improving the lives of people in other countries who take on American jobs at a lower wage should not be done at the expense of lowering the living standards of American workers argue critics of increased outsourcing efforts. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, citing a study by Professor Howard Rubin, challenges the reported cost-savings of outsourcing, noting that businesses reported an average of 44% savings on outsourced jobs, when they really were only saving 20% once neglected costs were factored into the equation. Taking a true assessment of the costs of outsourcing would reveal that keeping jobs in the United States is more competitive than many might think.
Outsourcing has resulted in the loss of American jobs without sufficient remedies to provide workers with further employment opportunities. While proponents of outsourcing contend that high-value jobs will be created to replace jobs lost by outsourcing, projections made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2004 belie that expectation. As CNN commentator Lou Dobbs reports, of the top-ten projected areas of job growth only three categories require a college degree. Dobbs also notes that people take new jobs that provide only 80 percent of their former pay rate. While training has been proposed as a means to better the chances of better employment, such programs are expensive. Frank LaGrotta, a member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature, has struggled with the issue of jobs lost to foreign competition. When a steel company left a property vacant in Pennsylvania, LaGrotta states, "We found a lamp manufacturer to move into the empty building. The new lamp-makers didn't pay as well as the old steel-makers, but 600 jobs was, well, 600 jobs. I say was because those lamps are now made in China."
Beyond its impact on the individual worker, outsourcing has negative consequences for the overall American economy. Although free trade is often cited as a reason for outsourcing, Dobbs suspects that economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who routinely advocated free trade, would hold a different opinion if they realized that decisions like outsourcing were made at the expense of national self-interest. "They also could not have imagined that one nation would effectively risk bankrupting itself by transferring its comparative advantage of knowledge base, expertise, and capital to its trading partners, and then ship its jobs overseas as well," he states. Dobbs further contends that the education and career choices that people are making to adjust to a society that embraces outsourcing weaken the position of the American economy in the world.
What can be done to mitigate the impact of outsourcing on the American economy?
While the outsourcing of American jobs presents a challenge for workers who have lost their employment to foreign competition, steps can be taken to minimize the negative impact of outsourcing on the American economy. Training programs can increase the chance that an employee who has lost his or her job will be able to work in another field. Incentives offered to students to earn degrees in math, science, and engineering---disciplines that typically have resulted in high paying jobs---could boost the earning potential of a new generation of young professionals. Improved access to broadband technologies in neglected rural and urban areas could open workers otherwise unaware of the ways in which technology is transforming the economic landscape to the potential of the digital economy.
Adjustments to the American tax code, the introduction of policies that spur new business in burgeoning industries, and the strengthening of labor unions would all serve to insulate the American economy from the impact of outsourcing. New policies and programs are needed to increase the employability of people moving into the job market or dealing with a job loss due to outsourcing. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton contends that the expansion of existing government programs---like the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, designed to retrain and provide financial assistance to people who have lost manufacturing jobs---and adjustments to the tax code to stop providing incentives to companies who send jobs overseas are crucial to protecting the American economy from the consequences of outsourcing. She also identifies a need for institutions of higher learning to attract students to the fields of science and math, disciplines in which the United States has been losing ground to countries such as India and China. She laments the coverage of broadband Internet technology in America, pointing out that the United States ranks eleventh in providing network access to its citizens. She states, "We have to equip businesses and workers to become even more competitive, further develop the digital economy, and work to end trade and tax practices which undermine competitiveness."
Robert D. Atkinson, of the Progressive Policy Institute, who suggests that while the new economy might be preventing people from achieving the "American Dream of owning a home, buying a car, and providing economic security for one's family," the government and industry can work more closely together to define and promote new classes of jobs to replace redundant positions. During the transition away from low-wage industries, Atkinson argues for reforms in labor laws that fortify the position of workers in collective bargaining sessions. He also advocates the adoption of a universal health care policy and promotes the indexing of the minimum wage to inflation. Tax policies that eliminate the advantage that the rich have over the poor would further reduce the impact that outsourcing has on the American economy. He argues that low-paying jobs do not need to be preserved if technologies and efficiencies result in their loss, but during the transition to an economy in which these jobs might be lost to overseas competition, more should be done to create new jobs and concomitant skills.
Outsourcing is a business practice in which a company hires service providers, usually located outside of the country, to do work that the company believes can be performed more efficiently and less expensively by these outside contractors. With the advent of the Internet and high-speed networks spanning the globe, more jobs than ever before can easily be transferred to other countries. In an age of globalization, the location of workers performing many jobs has become largely irrelevant. However, the practice of outsourcing has become the source of heated debate in the United States. Many people blame much of the country's unemployment on outsourcing and are alarmed by predictions that millions more jobs will be outsourced in the coming years. To better understand the current debate over outsourcing, it is important to know a little about the history of the practice, the kinds of jobs that are being outsourced, and the countries to which jobs are being transferred.
Outsourcing is a much older practice than some people realize. In colonial days, American businesses outsourced the production of covered-wagon covers and clipper ships' sails to workers in Scotland. The raw material for these products was imported from India. A couple of hundred years later, in the 1970s, computer companies began to outsource their payroll applications to outside service providers. However, most of these jobs were outsourced to companies in other states rather than overseas. It was in the late 1980s that the practice of outsourcing began to boom. During this time the field of information technology (IT) was growing rapidly, and the demand for IT workers who could develop hardware and software exploded. As the Internet and telecommunications fields developed, companies created thousands of high-paying jobs to attract talented IT employees to work for them. As the U.S. economy faltered, however, companies had to cut their IT budgets and began to seek a less expensive labor force outside of the United States.
Outsourcing has thus become an important trend in business strategy, with many companies claiming that having offshore capabilities is crucial for competitiveness in the global marketplace. American corporations also assert that outsourcing leads to increased efficiency because it allows companies to focus on their own strengths, channeling their resources into areas in which they excel and utilizing outside labor for areas in which they are less strong. Not only does outsourcing contribute to efficiency, it is also a major source of cost-savings.
Opponents of outsourcing are concerned about the hundreds of thousands of Americans losing jobs to outsourcing. Increasingly, these displaced workers are highly educated people with advanced degrees in fields including engineering, radiology, mathematics, and information technology. They are being replaced by equally well-educated but lower-salaried workers in India and China. Although some economists argue that more education and retraining is the solution for workers displaced by outsourcing, others argue that people who have already spent years studying one field will have little motivation to retrain in another field since their jobs in the new field may also be outsourced in the future. These displaced employees may never be able to find the same quality jobs that are lost to outsourcing.
The idea of outsourcing has its roots in the 'competitive advantage' theory propagated by Adam Smith in his book 'The Wealth of Nations' which was published in the year 1776. Over the years, the meaning of the term 'outsourcing' has undergone a sea-change. What started off as the shifting of manufacturing goods to countries providing cheap labor during the Industrial Revolution, has taken on a new connotation in today's scenario. In a world where information technology has become the backbone of businesses worldwide, 'outsourcing' is the process through which one company hands over part of its work to another company, making it responsible for the design and implementation of certain business process under the requirements and specifications of the outsourcing company.
This outsourcing process is beneficial to both the outsourcing company and the outsourcing service provider. In an outsourcing relationship, the outsourcing service provider enables the outsourcer to reduce operating costs, increase quality in non core areas of business, save on effort and increase in productivity Outsource2india (O2I), a pioneer in outsourcing since the year 1999, provides ten distinct services which cater to a wide range of industries. Outsource to O2I and get access to proficient and cost-effective services.
Since the onset of globalization in India during the early 1990s, successive Indian governments have pursued programs of economic reform committed to liberalization and privatization. Until the year 1994, the Indian telecom sector was under the control of the governmental. The state owned units in India enjoyed a monopoly in the market. In the year 1994, the government announced a policy under which the sector was liberalized and private participation was encouraged. The ‘New Telecom Policy’ of 1999 brought in further changes with the introduction of IP telephony and ended the state monopoly on international calling facilities. This brought about a drastic reduction heralded the golden era for the ITES/BPO industry. This in turn ushered in a slew of inbound/outbound call centers and data processing centers.
Although the IT industry in India has existed since the early 1980s, it was the early and mid 1990s that saw the emergence of outsourcing. One of the first outsourced services was medical transcription, but outsourcing of business processes like data processing, medical billing, and customer support began towards the end of the 1990s when MNCs established wholly owned subsidiaries which catered to the offshoring requirements of their parent companies. Some of the earliest players in the Indian outsourcing market were American Express, GE Capital and British Airways.
The ITES or BPO industry is a sector in India that has been in existence for a little more than ten years. Despite its recent arrival on the Indian scene, the industry has grown phenomenally and has now become a very important part of the export-oriented IT software and services environment. It initially began as an activity confined to multinational companies, but today it has developed into a broad based business platform backed by leading Indian IT software and services organizations and other third party service providers.
The ITES/BPO market expanded its base with the entry of Indian IT companies. The ITES market of the present day is characterized by the existence of these IT giants who are able to leverage their broad skill-sets and global clientele to offer a wide spectrum of services. The spectrum of services offered by Indian companies has evolved substantially from its humble beginnings. Today, Indian companies are offering a variety of outsourced services ranging from customer care, medical transcription, medical billing services and database marketing, to Web sales/marketing, accounting, tax processing, transaction document management, telesales/telemarketing, HR hiring and biotech research.
Looking at the success of India's IT industry, the central government identified the ITES sector as a key contributor to the economic growth that prioritized the attraction of FDI in this segment by establishing 'Software Technology Parks' and 'Export Enterprise Zones'. Benefits like tax-holidays generally enjoyed by the software industry were also made available to the ITES/BPO sector. The National Telecom Policy (NTP) was introduced in the year 1999 and the deregulation of the telecom industry opened up national, long distance, and international connectivity to competition. The governments of various states also provided assistance to companies to overcome the recruitment, retention, and training challenges, in order to attract investments to their region.
The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has created platforms for the dissemination of knowledge and research in the industry through its surveys and conferences. NASSCOM acts as an 'advisor, consultant and coordinating body' for the ITES/BPO industry and liaisons between the central and state government committees and the industry. The ardent advocacy of the ITES/BPO industry has led to the inclusion of call centers in the 'Business Auxiliary Services' segment, thereby ensuring exemption from service tax under the Finance Bill.
These measures have led to a steady inflow of investments by large foreign companies such as Reuters, for establishing large captive ITES/BPO facilities across India. Moreover, the existing ITES/BPO operations of major multi-nationals are also being ramped up to cater to the ever increasing demand for better and speedier services. Almost all of India's top ITES/BPO giants have announced some form of expansion and are in the process of hiring manpower to fill in the additional seats. India's competitive advantage lies in its ability to provide huge cost savings thereby enabling productivity gains and this has given India an edge in the global ITES/BPO marketplace. NASSCOM studies pinpoint the following factors as the major reasons behind India's success in this industry.
Abundant, skilled, English-speaking manpower, which is being harnessed even by ITES hubs such as Singapore and Ireland
High-end telecom and infrastructure which is at par with global standards
Strong quality orientation among players and their focus on measuring and monitoring quality targets
Fast turnaround times and the ability to offer 24x7 services based on the country's unique geographic location that allows for leveraging time zone differences
Proactive and positive policy environment which encourages ITES/BPO investments and simplifies rules and procedures
A friendly tax structure, which places the ITES/BPO industry on par with IT services companies.
Outsourcing to India offers significant improvements in quality and productivity for overseas companies on crucial parameters such as number of correct transactions, number of total transactions, total satisfaction factor, number of transactions/hours and the average speed of answers. Surveys by NASSCOM also revealed that Indian companies are better focused on maintaining quality and performance standards. Indian ITES/BPO companies are on an ascending curve as far as the quality standards are concerned. Organizations that have achieved ISO 9000 certification are migrating to the ISO 9000:2000 standards and companies on the CMM framework are realigning themselves to the CMMI model. Apart from investing in upgrading their CRM and ERP initiatives, many Indian ITES companies are beginning to acknowledge the COPC certifications for quality and are working towards achieving COPC licenses.
Despite being a fledgling in the global ITES/BPO industry, the Indian ITES industry recorded a growth rate in excess of 50% in the years 2002-03. Industry experts consider this a positive indication of the times to come and a look at the ranking and the revenue and headcount statistics show the potential of the industry. The global ITES/BPO industry was valued at around US$ 773 billion during the year 2002 and according to estimates by the International Data Corporation worldwide, it is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9% in the future. NASSCOM lists the major indicators of the high growth potential of the ITES/BPO industry in India as the following.
During the years 2003-04, the ITES-BPO segment achieved a 54 percent growth in revenues as compared to the previous years
ITES exports accounted for US$ 3.6 billion in revenues, up from US$ 2.5 billion during the years 2002-03
The ITES-BPO segment also proved to be a major opportunity for job seekers, creating employment for around 74,400 additional personnel in India during the years 2003-04
The number of Indians working for the ITES sector jumped to 245,500 in the year 2004
In the future, the BPO segment is expected to employ over 1.1 million Indians, according to studies conducted by NASSCOM and leading business Intelligence company, McKinsey & Co. Market research shows that in terms of job creation, the ITES-BPO industry is growing at over 50 percent
Surveys of the Indian ITES/BPO industry have shown the following trends:
Finance: With the financial services segment moving into value added domains like insurance claims processing, financial management services and equity research, this segment is expected to clock the highest growth.
HR services: HR services are also expected to grow in the future.
Payment services: This segment has also been identified as a high growth area within the industry, and is expected to generate high revenues.
Administration: Revenues from the administration services segment are expected to increase in the future.
Content development: The content development services segment which includes engineering and design services, digitization (GIS), animation, network management and biotech research, is expected clock a large turnover in the future.
The availability of technically trained and skilled manpower in India is making companies across the world look at the country as a profitable base to shift their high-end support services. Companies like COLT Technology Services are considering outsourcing their technical back-office support work to India. Other areas are high-end network engineering/management support. Another field which is showing immense potential is that of digital content creation and animation. Animation studios like Walt Disney, MGM and Warner Brothers are already outsourcing low-end work like clean-ups, tweening and modelling to India. The availability of skilled and trained manpower and India's ability to keep in step with the latest technological advances in the industry is prompting foreign studios to consider India as a base to shift other high-end animation work like storyboarding and developing original content for animated films ad TV series. Teleradiology is the next segment that holds great promise, mainly due to the time zone differences and the availability of highly skilled radiologists. Engineering services like CAD/CAM 2D, 3D and CAE modeling and design automation are the latest additions to the ever increasing list of processes being outsourced to India.
Source: Articlesbase By CD Mohatta The relationship between the United States of America and India has seen tremendous improvement during the years of President Bush. With Barack Obama soon to take over as the new President of the United States of America, what can India expect? Let us discuss that.
President George Bush has been very good with India. He has been quote understanding about the problems India faces and he also recognizes India as an emerging power. The days when US used to treat India as an underdeveloped nation are over. The reality is different now. United States of America knows that India cannot be ignored. United States of America has to give respect to India because of the power it wields. Barack Obama will have to consider this while relating to India. If Barack Obama wants to make India talk to Pakistan about Kashmir that is not possible any more. India does not wish to be treated as a third world country anymore. The kind of economic resurgence in India makes it a future super power and India expects that recognition from the world now. It will be in the interest of United States of America to treat India thus to get more business from Indians.
India expects the new United States of America president to take note of the terrorist activity of ISI of Pakistan. United States of America cannot ignore ISI and fight terrorism around the world any more. Barack Obama and his team will have to talk to Pakistan about this.
The recent Mumbai attack has exposed Pakistan as a terrorist haven and Indians want to punish the perpetrators of that crime. USA must support India in a way that makes Pakistan act. Merely making noises will not help any more. India wants United States of America to reconsider aid to Pakistan because most of the military aid is not used to fight the Taliban but to prepare Pakistan to fight India. This kind of aid must stop immediately. The Indian power can stop Chinese communism, not the United States of America. President Barack Obama must recognize this fact.
As he began reversing the Bush administration's climate change policies, President Barack Obama said America is ready to lead a "truly global coalition" to meet the challenge, but nations like China and India too must do their part.
"We will make it clear to the world that America is ready to lead," he said as he signed his first two Presidential Memoranda aimed at getting the US on the path to energy independence, a key step in preventing the US "from being held hostage" to hostile regimes and the threat of global warming.
"To protect our climate and our collective security, we must call together a truly global coalition. I've made it clear that we will act, but so too must the world," Obama said.
"That's how we will deny leverage to dictators and dollars to terrorists," he said. "And that's how we will ensure that nations like China and India are doing their part, just as we are now willing to do ours."
"It's time for America to lead, because this moment of peril must be turned into one of progress," he said, describing America's dependence on oil as "one of the most serious threats that our nation has faced".
"It bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation, and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism," he said. "It puts the American people at the mercy of shifting gas prices, stifles innovation and sets back our ability to compete."
"These urgent dangers to our national and economic security are compounded by the long-term threat of climate change, which if left unchecked could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines and irreversible catastrophe," Obama said.
But "America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes, and a warming planet", he declared.
Now is the time to meet the challenge at this crossroad of history by choosing a future that is safer for our country, prosperous for our planet, and sustainable, he said.
In what he called "a down payment on a broader and sustained effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil", Obama directed the Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards for carmakers' 2011 model year.
The standard, known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), was established in 1975 in the wake of the Arab Oil Embargo.
The second memo paves the way for California and more than a dozen other states to raise emissions standards above and beyond the national standard. They'd asked to do so before, but the Bush administration had denied the request.
"Instead of serving as a partner, Washington stood in their way," Obama said. "The days of Washington dragging its heels are over."
Source: Indian Express As a US Senator and then as a Democrat Presidential nominee, Barack Obama has brought up India in his campaign speeches, articles, interviews, at college and university gatherings, and in a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in September this year.
Letter to Manmohan Singh
In a letter written during Singh’s US visit in September, Obama wrote on the Indo-US nuclear deal to say that he was pleased to vote by proxy for the agreement in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Not only did he vouch to vote in favour of the deal—he had earlier introduced a killer amendment during the debate on the Hyde Act which was withdrawn—what he said next was the most reassuring bit for the Indian government. He wrote, “If time should run out in the current Congress, I will resubmit the agreement next year as president.”
He said he strongly supported the civil nuclear cooperation because, he wrote, “I believe it will enhance our partnership and deepen our cooperation on a whole range of matters…” He then went on to list the areas of cooperation.
First, he wrote, “Our common strategic interests call for redoubling US-Indian military, intelligence, and law enforcement cooperation. The recent bombings remind us that we are both victims of terrorist attacks on our soil, and we share a common goal of defeating these forces of extremism.”
Second, he said, “We should be working hand-in-hand to tap into the creativity and dynamism of our entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists to promote development of alternative sources of clean energy,” he said.
Obama had also expressed the hope that a civil nuclear cooperation agreement can open the door to greater collaboration with India on non-proliferation issues and listed CTBT and FMCT as high priorities. “I am committed to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and will make this a central element of US nuclear weapons policy.”
While this may not be music to the ears of South Block mandarins, former Ambassador to the US, Lalit Man Singh, is optimistic since the US President-elect believes and emphasises on “multilateralism, cooperation and consultations”. Former diplomat Arundhati Ghose, however, is cautious: “Obama is still untested. What he said during his campaign speeches will not necessarily become policy.”
India-US
“The world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy are natural partners, sharing important interests and fundamental democratic values. Already, in communities across (the US), Indian Americans are lifting up our economy and creating jobs. Leading entrepreneurs, innovators, lawyers, doctors, engineers and hardworking professionals are adding to the richness and success of the American society.”
