Business

Outsourcing companies aren't as evil as you might think
by Corina Ciubotaru

Today it’s almost common knowledge in the IT world that if you want services done cheaply India’s the place to go. Outsourcing has become somewhat of a trend and played a key role in developing poor countries with good science colleges such as India, China and Russia. But even though most companies think outsourcing is the easiest way to cut costs, this is not always the case. Cheaper workforce may mean lower quality, as some companies have noticed, and there even exist programmers who will only fix software bugs for a living. Language barriers are a serious problem when it comes to outsourcing, and the presumed low cost is initially rather high because companies have to send their own employees to train the outside crew and it may take him a while to work through all the issues. Outsourcing companies usually handle services like call centers and customer support for various companies, and rarely make the core products themselves. Some companies like Motorola chose to have their products manufactured elsewhere than the home country, but most firms believe it’s too expensive to move entire production facilities along with know-how to a far-away land. Some would say that turning to outside countries for services will ultimately destroy the IT business in America, by leaving worthy programmers out of work. But the reality is that there are very few programmers without a job in the US, while more and more employment opportunities arise for them each year, especially if they have precious knowledge in areas like Web 2.0, XML and user-generated content. This domain just isn’t interesting enough for many people, so companies also need to use workers from outside the USA to meet their demands.

related story: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070424_967747.htm

by Corina Ciubotaru for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

posted by Blog TechSource @ 1:29 PM