October 4, 2004 (Computerworld) --
Kathy Brittain White has a dream. She figures if U.S. CIOs will ship programming jobs to India to save money, maybe they'll ship them to rural Arkansas instead. So White's company, Rural Sourcing, is setting up outsourcing centers in places in the U.S. where the cost of living is low -- not as low as in Bangalore, but low enough to compete with the total cost of offshoring. White also plans to get her programmers up to a high process-maturity level like those offshore programming shops (see story). Low costs, high quality -- and it's onshore. For CIOs thinking about offshoring, this really does sound like a dream. For programmers worrying about their jobs, welcome to your new nightmare. By transplanting the offshoring model to the U.S. boonies, White is wiping out most of the emotional and political arguments against IT outsourcing -- the ones anti-offshoring groups have pinned their hopes on. These U.S. jobs aren't being shipped overseas -- they're being shipped to the U.S. The income tax revenue from these jobs doesn't disappear -- it just comes from a different state. Meanwhile, on the business end, White's approach hits the competition where it ain't, resolving the thorniest offshoring troubles. And as a former corporate CIO herself, White knows where all the pain points are. Cross-cultural confusion? Transnational legal questions? Lack of direct communication? Time-zone differences? Those issues are pretty much unavoidable when programming work goes out of the country. When the work goes out to the country, those issues are pretty much nonexistent. These problems have spurred some CIOs to bring IT jobs back from overseas. They're not just annoyances; they jack up the cost of offshoring and reduce the chances of success for an offshored software project. So if White's plan works, it will be a real alternative to offshoring -- an alternative that actually gets rid of some of the grief offshoring generates.
Wait, it gets better, at least if you're a CIO. If White's Rural Sourcing is successful, it will expand and spawn imitators. This new "farmshoring" crowd will start to soak up the outsourcing business that companies in India, Russia, China and elsewhere were expecting to grab. The offshore companies won't take that lying down. They'll beef up their offerings, improve their quality and expand their services, working to make offshoring worth the trouble. That, in turn, will push the farmshorers to improve their offerings. And the cycle will continue, with the ante raised each time. That's exactly what competition is supposed to create: more choice, better deals, a buyer's market. And it's a beautiful thing if you're a customer. Of course, it's not
"Gartner Inc. has issued a press release with the headline "Gartner Says Enterprises Must Anticipate How Societal Trends Will Impact..."
Read more...
"A few days back, Red Hat's Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora servers were broken into. We still don't know..."
Read more... Read more Management posts or See all Blogs
(Source: Computerworld) Is your career in sync with the current megatrends: business alignment, globalization, the consumerization of IT, web 2.0 and beyond? In this guide, you'll get advice about how to make yourself more valuable, how to make the global talent pool work for you and how to make sure you "get found" when you put yourself out there. Download this executive briefing
Qualified Security Assessors are not created equal
Download this whitepaper, free for a limited time, compliments of VeriSign! (Source: VeriSign) Learn how a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) can help you acheive full compliance and security in this white paper, presented by VeriSign and Computerworld. Download this white paper
From Laggard to Leader: Transforming the Data Center
From Laggard to Leader: Transforming the Data Center Register for this complimentary live webcast today! Go to the webcast
White Papers
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services.
XenServer FREE trial
Citrix XenServer is the simplest and most effective way to virtualize and provision servers. XenServer combines comprehensive server virtualization capabilities with unparalleled scalability, performance, economics, and ease-of-use. Based on the open source Xen hypervisor, XenServer delivers fast performance, easy management, and advanced features such as live migration.
See your link here
Subscribe to
Computerworld 
Download this whitepaper, free for a limited time, compliments of VeriSign!
From Laggard to Leader: Transforming the Data Center
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services.
This paper shows how Brocade StorageX enables tiers of storage across Windows and NetApp storage to align storage practices with organizational objectives. 