Outsourcing to Oklahoma?

In another example of U.S. tech companies seeking to offer low-cost alternatives to offshoring, systems integrator Ciber has opened a facility in Oklahoma City.

Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Ciber said the Oklahoma City site is the first of several low-cost, "made in America" application development centers it plans to open in 2005 and 2006. The company said it aims to create roughly 200 new jobs in Oklahoma City and upwards of 1,000 new jobs around the country, as additional "Cibersites" open. The Oklahoma City Cibersite opened Thursday.

"The creation of low-cost, domestic development centers provides Ciber's clients with new opportunities to leverage today's complex global sourcing options," Ciber Chief Executive Mac Slingerlend said in a statement. "There are many American labor markets outside the traditional technology centers that have skilled but underutilized IT (information technology) workers who can get IT projects done faster and cheaper."

A number of U.S. tech companies are bidding to win dollars that might otherwise flow to lower-wage countries like India by locating domestic operations in places other than technology corridors such as San Francisco and Boston. Start-up Rural Sourcing, for example, has set up two facilities in Arkansas. Software development company Decision Design operates on the outskirts of Chicago and just announced new office space on the fringe of Silicon Valley.

These companies are responding to the growing interest in shipping high-skilled work abroad. Offshoring holds out the potential for significant cost savings, but the arrangements aren't always perfect. Possible problems with offshore set-ups include cultural differences and communication challenges.

Ciber has offices in 17 countries and about 8,000 employees.

Midsize U.S. cities with lower-cost attributes "often have large populations of military, retirees and students, many of whom have not only similar technical education as overseas IT workers, but often have more experience," Slingerlend said.

Cibersite employees will be paid less than the national average, but they will earn more than their overseas counterparts, the company said.

[WarpKat]

So...

The biggest problem ISN'T India afterall...

[katamari]

200?

Two hundred. TWO HUNDRED. Compared to tens of thousands going to India?

In this case, starting small won't get you anywhere...

Good news

This is a very good business strategy. It helps US workers and provides a better solution for the needs of SMB that do not have a large IT staff. Dell found stateside outsourcing to be a better solution for their business (vs consumer) customers.

Been There Done That

In the 90's I worked for a company called Software Spectrum that opened a call center in Spokane, WA just to do that. We had contracts from Microsoft, Computer Associates and others. In the end this failed.

So I wish them the best of luck.

[gwilkins]

Outsourcing

It is about time that Corporate America wises up to the fact that we have to stop sending our Hi Tech jobs overseas. If this trend continues, when they finally wake up and realize there really is no cost benefit savings to boost their bonuses and have to bring the these jobs back home the former trained people will have left that segment of the business; in other words no trained people to fill open positions. America cannot continue to bleed our country of valuable jobs to offshore companies.
I have recently had experiences dealing with tech support from two different companies. One was located in India, and the other one was in the Philippines. The second one was so bad, that I hung up on him, a total disaster. While their English was passable, the ability to deal with customers was lacking.
Many areas in the USA that have high unemployment would welcome all such jobs. Not everyone from small rural areas can demand high pay for their services, but would gladly work for better pay and benefits if offered.
A case in point is the Milwaukee Accounting firm that had been using college students to do tax returns for their clients. These students were glad to gain the experience and skills they would be using once they graduate from college. However, this same firm got the brain fart to send their clients? valuable tax and financial information overseas to save a few pennies and boost the CEO's annual bonus. If I were one of their clients, I would raise holly you know what and yank my account from them immediately. To think they can freely send private personal information to a foreign company to do with, who knows what, is unconscionable.
One way to discourage such acts is to levy a tax on these companies making it financially unfeasible to conduct business this way. Another way is for Americans to boycott their services/products.
I saw the same mentality back in the 80's with automobile jobs going to Japan because the Japanese were supposedly more efficient than we were in manufacturing automobiles. While the true reason was, the Japanese government subsidized their auto manufacturers. Only when we increased the import taxes on them did they start to bring jobs here by opening plants here. So if they could do that, were was the competitive advantage of sending jobs to Japan? There was none.
Therefore, I say WAKE CORPORATE AMERICA and stop trying to snow us with your corporate rhetoric.