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Network Management Outsourced to India
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 18, 2006 04:05 PM
from the not-my-favorite-trend dept.
from the not-my-favorite-trend dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The latest wrinkle for outsourcing companies in India is long-distance monitoring of corporate computer networks in U.S. and Europe -- services that could be worth tens of billions of dollars, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Growth is expected as factories become more computerized and remote services expand to include controlling plant temperatures from afar and even monitoring who enters and exits the premises. 'Theoretically,' says Azim Premji, chairman and founder of India outsourcing company Wipro Ltd., 'anything on a network can be managed remotely from India.'"
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News: The Myth of the New India 378 comments
theodp writes "An NYT op-ed on The Myth of the New India reports that only 1.3M Indians are participating in the so-called new economy of BPO, leaving 400M have-nots without a piece of the pie. Despite recent gains, nearly 380M Indians still live on less $1 a day, setting the stage for rural and urban conflict." From the article: "No labor-intensive manufacturing boom of the kind that powered the economic growth of almost every developed and developing country in the world has yet occurred in India. Unlike China, India still imports more than it exports. This means that as 70 million more people enter the work force in the next five years, most of them without the skills required for the new economy, unemployment and inequality could provoke even more social instability than they have already."
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Outsourced (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outsourced (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Outsourced (Score:3, Funny)
Really, it isn't that hard.
Re:Outsourced (Score:3, Informative)
Not everything. (Score:4, Informative)
If you want job security.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:If you want job security.... (Score:5, Informative)
Medical tourism is booming in India. You can buy a return ticket to Delhi from NYC, get your artificial hips, knees, bypass surgery or whatever else done in a day, no hassles over any insurance, and be back in a week after checking out the Taj Mahal. It'll still cost you less than what you'd end up paying here in the US, after you factor in the time & money chasing your insurance company.
They have state of the art equipment in cosmetic surgery, hair replacement, laser hair removal in Bombay, all available at a fraction of what you'd pay out here in the US.
I was actually treated by one of the doctors who work in these facilities - he was an orthopaedic who got his postgrad training at the Harvard Medical School and then returned to India after his J1 visa waiver expired. Fixed my broken ankle and gave me shots, all for a grand total of 400 rupees. That's like nine dollars! I wouldn't dream of getting access to a Harvard trained medic in the US for $9. But that's India for you.
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Re:If you want job security.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Therein lies another problem. These highly skilled folks have to jump through all sorts of hoops and pay mounds of cash to get the same residence/citizenship rights as some loser living off the government. What the fuck?
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Re:If you want job security.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If you want job security.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have congress draft a universal medical contract. That contract would specify what the patient was responsible for and what the doctor was responsible for.
Any patient problems would have to be addressed by a board of doctors in the field that the accused doctor specialized in. They'd look at the case and decide if the doctor screwed up. If he screwed up, then he'd lose his license and the patient would get a
Re:If you want job security.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you want job security.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that you probably won't get good care in a public health system either.
To take a local Swedish example, you don't want to hear that the cancer clinic is closed for the
Hold on... (Score:4, Insightful)
"I'd rather have our system than the free-for-all (aka ****-em-all) system of the USA, where you have to pay up or die on the sidewalk."
Then, immediately, you say:
"Now if only we could be a little more selective about WHO we treat for free; kick those welfare ***-kissers out!"
I apologize if I missed some sarcasm, but your statements don't seem to make any sense.
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Re:If you want job security.... (Score:4, Informative)
Idia has world class facilities & top notch doctors, including
physical therapy & private suites for your extended recovery.
Many articles have been written about it
example: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=201
It's cheaper, less hassle and you get a higher quality experience.
India just has to overcome their rep for garbage strewn streets, etc.
Parent
Quit bitching! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Quit bitching! (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG (Score:2, Interesting)
oh wait.... wasn't this story first posted on CHIPS & DIPS like a thousand years ago?
Hahaha, that is priceless! (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the picture in the article. I've seen happier faces behind the counter at McDonalds. You can have those jobs India.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Who next? (Score:4, Interesting)
As the "lower" positions move (Score:4, Interesting)
It'll level out, the important thing is to allow the currencies to float freely, which isn't happening at the moment. That's what you should be complaining about to your MP/representative.
Parent
Oh this should go well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Outsourcing to China (Score:5, Interesting)
China Threatens Inda Eminence [wired.com]
Is this really the most cost effective management? (Score:3, Insightful)
Theoretically, anything on a network that can be managed remotely from India can also be managed by an expert system running on a CPU on that network... without the added expense of long distance communication and employees, and without the added failure modes of having your international links go down. Plus, the programming for the expert system should be around the same magnitude of difficulty as writing the scripts for the Indians to follow, and anything either one of them doesn't recognize is going to get escalated to a higher-up anyway. So why is outsourcing network management to a person in another country a big win over outsourcing to a machine? Neither one of them is capable of pushing the damn reset button!
Accountability (Score:4, Insightful)
For exmaple, when I have the ability to drive down the street and GET IN TO SOMEONES FACE if I am not satisfied with a product or service, you know what? I tend to get better service!
Thats what network management is, a service.
Any manager with half a brain would not do this. They would realize that (as other
Lesson; you need good local people!! Always have, always will.
my Slashdot duties have been outsourced to India (Score:5, Funny)
Theoretically... (Score:3, Insightful)
All your corporate secrets can be sold on the internet to the highest bidder.
Of course, some businesses don't need security, and don't give a stuff about the security of their employees records. So they needn't worry about their corporate data being accessible to anyone with a packet sniffer and some open source decryption software. And anyway, the American government has probably already collected and leaked their secrets, and the UK government is probably passing a law at this very moment requiring all secrets everywhere to be held on a database in Novosibirsk (sp?) on a computer owned by hackers.ru (but with Tony Blair having your GPG key for safety).
Thinks... Maybe I should not mix the coffee with brandy)
For some, not for everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that companies that outsource their network administration have an emergency lifeline in case of severe problems. It would probably be most cost-effective to have your main network administration in India, but have a local company (which contracts its services to multiple companies) only for problems that require a physical presence.
However, if your company's system experiences truly earth-shattering complications on a regular basis, maybe you ought to be outsourcing your network administration to Indian professionals who offer a tenfold talent-per-dollar increase over your existing resources. If nothing else, it's a better value for the 300 days out of the year when all the servers need is some remote babysitting.
Re:For some, not for everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
They had nice service penalties for bad service.
Then came the day that all technicians were busy fixing things at other companies and so the service company just paid them the penalty and said they would send out a tech when one became available. It was a couple days later. It cost them a couple hundred grand in those two days and they were lucky at that.
If the failure had been around tax time, the service agreement fines they had with their own customers for failur
Brilliant! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is freaking IN-SANE! These people are not all our friends and assumes we will always be allies. Imagine the opening shot in a future conflict being data networks and phones at thousands of businesses shutting down at once. All your web searches being re-routed because the corporate fucktards at Bellsouth decided to save a few pennies letting Indian support centers handle large chunks of their network maintenance.
I'm not saying Indian admins are reckless or incompetent. I'm saying that it's a bad idea to turn over too much control of our information resources over to a foreign country, just like it's a bad idea to depend on a fragile line of oil tankers connecting us to a bunch of wild-eyed goat herders for our transportation fuel and trusting the Chinese and Koreans with all our manufacturing capability. If push comes to shove they'll do what their government tells them to do. This is all going to come around to bite us in the ass one of these days.
You can certainly manage a network remotely... (Score:3, Interesting)
Organizations who are interested in outsourcing are also generally interested in growing their business; and when they grow, so does their infrastructure, including their networks, both in size and complexity. Expanding a network involves a tremendous number of physical resources and processes, including obtaining and installing cable, routers, servers, software, etc. Trust me, you want to have a knowledgeable network staff *on-site* to coordinate such a movement. I suppose that someone across the ocean could simply call up contractors to install all of this stuff, but the cost in time and efficiency, especially during the troubleshooting phase, would be enormous.
If your company wishes to maintain a stagnant network--one that can't adapt to the growth of their company; then by all means, outsource all your network management. Just hope your hardware never breaks.
I've worked with WIPRO folks before (Score:5, Insightful)
So, of course, they're cheaper, and people will go with them. Eventually they'll either fail, or get smart, and need someone local. By then they'll hire whoever India is outsourcing _their_ stuff to. There's whole continents we haven't started to do this with, yet.
Great idea (Score:4, Funny)
Got a toll free number ?
Globalisation is allmost once around by now (Score:5, Interesting)
Do what's fun. Do it good. Tell people about it. The rest just happens. Meanwhile you can offer writing procedures for network admining for outsourced admin services. At a more specialized rate that is.
What about... (Score:3, Funny)
I hear a lot of people talk about local vs remote (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an intelligence test people. If you do not get the next step that is the obvious solution to managers who came up with the idea of outsourcing then congrats. You are an idiot.
The solution to the problems that arise when you outsource the management of your non-outsourced systems? Outsource the systems.
TADA!
Why not? They are outsourcing everything else aren't they?
And don't think outsourcing is anything new either. How many of you work in companies that have their own cantina's. Used to be a member of the company meaning they had heart for the business and were for instance willing to work overtime along with the other workers.
Been outsourced to special companies meaning nowadays it is all the same generic crap with zero attention to the specific needs of the company. Like for instance making the cooking equipment available to people having to work the nightshift.
Offcourse now everyone is crying because it is their job that is going away. If you didn't protest when the thee lady was outsourced then don't expect anyone to protest because your job is going away.
Title just off by one word! (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, why wouldn't a 30k per year, indian masters in business administration manager be able to manage just as effectively as a 4 million dollar per year manager (and hey- he'd have better contacts with the new movers and shakers).
Idia's too expensive, use Russians. (Score:3, Interesting)
After many decades of English subjug^H^H^H^H partnership with India, Indians are far to expensive and skilled for operations work. It's much better to use such an well known and educated work force for research and development [gecareers.com]. What a crime it would be to make PhDs push buttons and monitor mind numbing panels for a living. It would be better for them to stay home like their US counterparts, and they will have to if they keep get much more expensive.
For operations work, we need the educated and inexpensive discipline that can be found in all the former Soviet territories. The people who built and named the Kurks [wikipedia.org] obviously have the discipline and razor sharp focus demanded for the job. Moreover there's great economic need for such a thing. I hear there are still many people displaced and unemployed by the Chernobyl dissaster [wikipedia.org]. Remote operations of Nuclear power plants is just the break they need. Due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, they are cheaper than the happily employed people who live next to you. Just think of the savings and how much more money people like Neutron Jack deserve [wikipedia.org]. Their compensation [thesmokinggun.com] is hardly enough [bcheights.com] for all the hard exercise they get. Expect the paper value of such forward looking companies as GE, NBC and Microsoft to skyrocket.
Ten years ago, I read a joke but some people must have taken it litterally. The joke was, a clever executive noticed the value of their company increased 10% every time they fired five percent of their workforce. The bold executive soon got into a boasting contest with others. Everyone was fired and the Dow hit 10,000. Oh yeah, well just own all the ideas other people come up with and implement that will work.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
2)If they didn't do anything, you had too large a staff for your size of an organization.
and of course
3)Good luck when servers break.
4)Good luck protecting your company secrets. EMployees have some risk, but foreign companies that may have many more people and minimal oversite (and completely different laws) are a huge risk.
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
More likely, it was three people working for 50k, and a manager raking in 350k to twiddle his thumbs and drink coffee. Welcome to America, where the people are bottomheavy and the businesses are topheavy!
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Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Some positions can be done affectively remotely but when it comes to networking you really want people to stay put especially in terms of security. Unless a PTP link between here and India has gone down dramatically in price. Got to love adding attack vectors to a netw
Re:Yes (Score:3, Funny)
My guess is, the remaining guy is the manager, who is making 500k - ($8,500 * 12)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone with the power to "figure it out" and do something about it has absolutley zero incentive to do so. Nice, huh?
This is the point where you should be asking yourself "how do I bec
Re:Ouch (Score:4, Informative)
It's beneficial for the exec doing the offshoring: lower costs this financial quarter = nice bonus and a better offer from another company.
I've seen this kind of thing over and over, and it usually benefits one person.
Parent
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's outsource the MANAGERS & CEOs (Score:3, Funny)
I hope shareholders sue the boards of any companies that don't outsource their management, they are costing those shareholders money.
Laugh-a while you can, monkey-boys, your turn is coming.
Re:Let's outsource the military and legal business (Score:4, Insightful)
Face it, outsourcing is already a way of life. The only difference between now and earlier is that the people to whom things get outsourced don't look like you, don't speak your language and keep different hours. And I'd argue that even that can also be said when you talk about outsourcing support centers from California to South Carolina.
The main problem with outsourcing right now has nothing to do with "ohhhh... scary foreigners get to do what we used to do!" It has everything to do with outsourcing being applied in the wrong places, unrealistic expectations of its benefits and there being little oversight and control exerted over the outsourced operations.
Parent
Re:Bangalore or Rochester. What's the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
> We monitor from Toronto, Boulder, Rochester and Bangalore. The support we get from the group in India
> is no worse that the support that is delivered from North America.
I've seen the same - when the company in the US insists on hiring only low-dollar employees. Then the work out of the US is pretty much the same as what you'd get from India. Simply because highly experienced (> 5-10 years) Indian technologies are so rare.
Of course, a company *could* just follow the wisdom from the Mythical Man Month (published when? 1966?) in which the author (project manager for OS development on first mainframe) stated that there was a 7:1 difference in productivity between best & mediocre developers. Since then Gates stated he thought more sophisticated technology has increased the ratio to 100:1.
But lets assume the more conservative number of 7:1:
- so for about 50% additional cost (higher salary), you can get 600% additional productivity
- so the work being done by a team of 100 mediocre system & network admins could probably be perform by 15 really sharp engineers (~80% savings)
- so the cost savings of just moving to available sharp engineers in the US would exceed the cost savings of shipping work to India (which is now often calculated at merely 25-50% savings best case)
But that would require insightful management - capable of learning from well established lessons of 40 years ago. Kind of a hopeless proposition at some companies. And apparently the 7:1 difference in productivity doesn't apply to managment. Aha, that's the ticket - outsource the low-skilled management!
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Re:You reckon? (Score:5, Insightful)
And even though we're in India, we've heard of ssh, and OpenSSH. We've even heard of OpenBSD, cue *shock*, *horror*.
Managing things over the VPN --> no DMZ accessible login services (other than ssh, openVPN).
RRD and SNMP would be stored locally on-site. The only time it would get to us would be when we actually need to check something. So no, the bandwidth usage is not going to be that high.
And we don't send passwords via plain-text email, we either call the passwords in through the phone or since we're in through the VPN anyway, setup local secure communication and use that.
Seriously, we're not idiots, we read
Next step is Xen and virtualisation for some of what we do. Oh, I'm in an Indian startup, and we're trying to mainly target the Indian market. Any spill-over into the American/European market will be additional revenue. Also, given the cost structures we are targetting here, there will be no company in the US which can compete with us - on cost. And whatever is done technologically, it will take us but 6 months to catch up. Assuming of course we haven't done it already.
Have fun!
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