Offshoring and communication
This CIO.com story has an interesting take on the spread of distance enabling technology - the take being that the technology is making it less reasonable to send small/medium jobs offshore. I'd argue that "large" jobs are probably a mistake, unless you properly split them into a set of small/medium ones - which in turn makes easy communication more relevant than sheer lower cost.
Of course, the trump to all this will be if firms in India (China, etc) start moving up the food chain. IMHO, it makes little sense to offshore a bunch of developers, when project management (and up) is still in North America - the timezone difference makes proper communication nearly impossible. Look back at the experiences of the big US automakers though - it was when nimbler foreign competition started taking on the whole job and shipping competing cars that they ran into trouble.
I had someone in comments the other day ask me who was going to challenge Microsoft. I rather expect that the CEO of GM, circa 1960, had the same smug thought...
Comments
More handwaving
[Rick] April 10, 2006 13:19:49.960
I had someone in comments the other day ask me who was going to challenge Microsoft. I rather expect that the CEO of GM, circa 1960, had the same smug thought...
That would have been me, but you still haven't answered the question except to give a vague analogy to the CEO of GM, circa 1960. Maybe if you give a more concrete hypothesis, then you can be taken more seriously. At least the slashdorks back in 2000 were willing to pontificate about the death of Microsoft by now because of "the community doesn't like Microsoft".
I thought it was clear
[ James Robertson] April 10, 2006 13:35:00.115
Comment by James Robertson
Circa 1960, the great minds at GM (et. al.) thought there was no overseas competitive threat. I think MS thinks the same thing now.
In other words, more handwaving
[Rick] April 10, 2006 21:46:52.177
N/T
Hand Waving?
[ James Robertson] April 10, 2006 22:20:42.553
Comment by James Robertson
You can disagree, but how is it hand waving to say that, IMHO, Microsoft could face the same kind of threat from India (China, etc) that GM faced from Japan and Germany back then?
James, give it a rest
[Rick] April 10, 2006 22:38:20.567
You're engaging in total hand waving and not showing anything.
GM CEO, circa 1960?
Come on, you can do better than that. Either put up or shut up. Please, don't embarrass Cincom.
Re: Offshoring and communication
[ James Robertson] April 11, 2006 0:18:49.824
Comment by James Robertson
All I'm saying is this: The US auto industry did not see foreign competition coming back then. It doesn't look to me like the big IT players see it coming either. They see India (etc) as sources of low cost labor - they don't see them as places that new applications and services could originate from. How that's hand waving, I have no idea. It's my take on a possible outcome. Will it go that way? Your guess is as good as mine
actually, Jim is making a valid point, but ...
[Troy Brumley] April 11, 2006 8:35:54.073
The industries (autos, IT) are different in their makeup wrt large and small companies, but I see the parallel at the big and small level. One thing I've also noticed is something akin to the disdain that American auto workers felt for foreign labor toward offshore programmers.
"All the good ones are over here..."
That may be somewhat true, but volume can make a difference.
Anyone thinking that Microsoft doesn't get it should read some of the comments from Bill Gates in The World Is Flat. I get the feeling that IBM gets it to, but Oracle doesn't get mentioned, nor do any of the application (ERP) types, iirc.
Companies that use outsourcing to let them be better, instead of just cutting costs, will probably displace the current set of giants in our industry, and some new major players will definitely be offshore companies.