Showing posts with label outsourcing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outsourcing. Show all posts

11 January 2009

Why Outsourcing, not Open Sourcing?

James McGovern has a question (and another brilliant pic - where *does* he find them?):

Why do people outsource when they can open source? For example, if there are 250 P&C insurance companies in the US in which each may have their own claims administration system, why do they outsource individually to India instead of open sourcing the systems that are expensive but otherwise don't provide competitive advantage? Is it the lack of vision within the enterprise architecture crowd?

31 December 2008

The Super-Stupid Super-Snooping Database Idea

This is just a jokette, right?

The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.

I mean, not content with attempting to put into place a total surveillance system, old Jacqui now seriously wants to out-source it? Which will effectively means that it can be owned by anyone - including a foreign entity - that buys the company with the contract.

I can see the political advantages of doing so - "oh no, *we* didn't lose all your intimate data, blame the company" - but this is stupidity squared.

16 April 2008

The Coming Shift: China Starts Outsourcing

Here's another straw in the wind:

MOBILE PHONE builder China Techfaith said Wednesday that it has signed up Egyptian firm Quicktel to develop and assemble low cost handsets there.

Once therer are cheaper places to build stuff than China, the latter's role as the workshop of the world will diminish, and with it the economic and ecological imbalances that has led to.

Of course, the West - and China - will need another cheap workshop to keep their unsustainable lifestyles going, and to soak up all the outsourced pollution. My money's on Africa, and it looks like Egypt is leading the way....

04 October 2007

IBM Makes Good on Patent Bloop

Not something you see everyday - yet:

IBM has put into the public domain and withdrawn its application for patent number US2007/0162321 - Outsourcing of Services. This patent application covers analyzing work flows, skills, economic costs, etc. Here’s why we are withdrawing it — IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents. Even though the patent application in question was filed eight months before the policy took effect in September, 2006, had the policy been in place at the time, IBM would not have filed the application. We’re glad the community pointed this application out so IBM could take swift action.

21 June 2007

Paying the True Cost

I and many others have written about the need for economic goods to include all the real costs of production - including environmental costs. Here's a great demonstration of what goes wrong if you don't:

"The West moved its manufacturing base to China knowing it was vastly more polluting than Japan, Europe or the US," he added.

"No environmental conditions were attached to this move; in fact the only thing manufacturers were interested in was the price of labour.

"This trend kept the price of our products down but at the cost of soaring greenhouse gas emissions. Long term, this policy has been a climate disaster.

Nominal price goes down, environmental cost goes up. If the latter were factored in, China would not be so eager to employ production techniques that poison its own land and people.