outsource

Virgin versus Vikings

The Virgin Group is the object of much scorn this week in Scotland, according to the Times of London.

The company plans to close a 260-employee call center in the village of Dingwall, the self-proclaimed Viking capital of Scotland, and move the work to India.

The deal has outraged Scottish politicians and labor leaders, with one union official calling on Virgin to return more than $1 billion in government subsidies the company collected last year. Sir Richard Branson may have messed with the wrong Vikings.

Meanwhile in Denver, Colo., the cowboy capital of the West, some lawmakers would like to … Read more

Offshoring observers square off

Sick of getting opinions about offshoring filtered through the media? Here's your chance to hear with your own ears some significant voices in the debate over shipping work abroad.

A Webcast is available of an offshore outsourcing discussion earlier this week involving John McCarthy, the Forrester Research analyst famous for predicting more than 3 million services jobs will head overseas, and Norm Matloff, a University of California, Davis professor and long-time advocate for software programmers. Rounding out the speakers were David Foote, president of compensation research Foote Partners, and Dean Lane, chief executive of software company Varitools.

The title … Read more

Outsourcing to Arkansas

A new kid on the block promises to give offshore outsourcing a run for its money--by routing technology work to rural America.

Rural Sourcing is a start-up founded and largely funded by Kathy White, former chief information officer for health care giant Cardinal Health. White, also Rural Sourcing's president, has set up two facilities in Arkansas, has another center coming on line in New Mexico in January, and is in talks to open yet another facility in North Carolina.

The company can offer services such as application maintenance and Internet development for roughly 40 percent less than what other … Read more

Where GE goes, will others follow?

This morning's announcement that General Electric will sell a 60% majority stake in its global outsourcing business speaks volumes about the future of offshoring.

GE was one of the early American companies to tap India's outsourcing potential. But the outsourcing unit limited its service to GE and its customers.

That restriction no longer need apply now that General Atlantic Partners and Oak Hill Capital Partners are paying $500 million for a majority ownership position in GE Capital International Services. Should they choose, the new equity owners can now widen the scope of the business to contract with any … Read more

Dell and the definition of "is"

Dell CEO Kevin Rollins came out swinging against overseas outsourcing in a speech delivered Friday at a conference sponsored by Forrester Research in Boston. For the folks at Dell, who delight in tweaking IBM and Hewlett-Packard, the occasion provided Rollins with a bully pulpit from which he could draw invidious comparisons with his major rivals.

Both IBM and HP are big foreign outsourcers and have taken their PR lumps accordingly. But methinks Rollins was stretching the truth when he suggested Dell was following a different path. Fact is that the company has long had factories and support centers in other … Read more

Whose job is most vulnerable?

The Dallas Morning News carries the findings of a new study listing the occupations most vulnerable to being outsourced.

"Myths and Realities of Globalization," compiled by Lori Kletzer of the economics department at the University of California at Santa Cruz, concludes that the least vulnerable professions are in building maintenance; health-care support; education and libraries; construction and extraction; and transportation.

The positions most likely to get hit by overseas outsourcing? Military services; farm, fish and forestry; computers and mathematics; life, physical and social sciences; legal; and architecture and engineering.

Out of sight, out of mind?

(This went up today as my regular Friday column on News.com)

I had been spending a lot of time thinking about the future of offshore outsourcing when one Yuta Tabuse turned up on my personal radar.

For those of you who are not hoops fanatics, Tabuse is a 5-foot-9-inch reserve who plays for the Phoenix Suns. Tabuse also happens to be the first Japanese national to make the roster of a National Basketball Association club.

As a fellow 5-foot-9er, I'm pulling for the diminutive point guard, though it makes no difference whether Tabuse goes down in NBA annals … Read more

India sees offshoring controversy dying down

The blue states may be gnashing their collective teeth in anguish but business reaction in India to George Bush's re-election has been nothing short of ecstatic.

With John Kerry out of the picture, the Indian consensus is that the prevailing trade winds (political, of course) out of the United States aren't likely to dramatically shift when it comes to overseas outsourcing. Kiran Karnik, president of India's National Association of Software and Service Companies disclosed at a New Dehli press conference on Thursday that some technology firms have been slow to sign or announce deals with local firms … Read more

An outsourcing parable

Jack McHugh, a legislative analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, offers a primer on how to tally up the costs and benefits of outsourcing. Interesting take, though he makes no bones about his opposition to any restrictions on the uninterrupted global flow of labor and trade.