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Network Management Outsourced to India
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 18, 2006 05:05 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)
Parent
Not everything. (Score:4, Informative)
If you want job security.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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.
Parent
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?
Parent
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)
Parent
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
Outsourcing to China (Score:5, Interesting)
China Threatens Inda Eminence [wired.com]
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)
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.
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).
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!
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
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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: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!
Parent
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: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!
Parent