This page provides links to offshore outsourcing news articles published in February 2004. Please note that over time some links may become broken as the various web sites are updated. We endevour to keep the links up-to-date, but inevitably some broken links will occur.

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You can also read February's News Reviews and Press Releases.

News Archive

25 February 2004 The Great Offshore Outsourcing Debate

Wisconsin Technology Network

A few weeks ago, I referred to offshore outsourcing as an issue du jour. I stand corrected. It’s rapidly becoming an issue de l’annee (an election year at that for America) due to slow job growth and increasing questions about the economic future of the U.S. Prominent voices along every point of the political spectrum from the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination to the Bush Administration and a host of academics, corporate executives and media commentators and reporters now seem to be focusing 24/7 on the trend of outsourcing of manufacturing and service work (and jobs) offshore...

25 February 2004 BPO operations less secure: UK bank chief

The Economic Times

...Asked why he preferred to keep [Alliance and Leicester's] call centre staff in Britain, Pym said, “Firstly, because customers prefer it. Customers tell us they are transferring their business to us because of that. Secondly, for security reasons...

...a spokesman for HSBC said: “To say security is not a concern would be complacent in the extreme. But I don’t think there is any relationship between overseas processing and security...

25 February 2004 IT Act may get data protection teeth

The Economic Times

..."There is a need to amend the IT Act 2000 to include data protection clauses in it for our BPO and outsourcing industry"...

...Of late, the absence of a data protection legislation has created enough heat along with the outsourcing backlash in US...

25 February 2004 Job scores: India +152,500, US -234,000

The Economic Times

While the US lost 234,000 IT jobs in 2003, for Indian techies 152,000 new jobs were created...

...technology consulting, back-office and call centre work, is expected to employ some 813,500 people at the end of March, up from 661,000 a year ago...

...India's back-office industry is expected to employ 245,500 people by the end of March, up about 44 per cent from a year ago...

24 February 2004 I love India / I hate India: American CEOs

The Economic Times

...Culled from the World Wide Web are two such case studies - of success and of failure - which probably explain why the jury's still out on whether India is right shore for American CEOs' offshoring strategies...

...Rosenblatt had a bad Indian experience, but that did not put him off outsourcing. He found his dream team eventually in Ukraine...

24 February 2004 Anti-offshore-outsourcing groups banding together

Computer World

Groups hoping to slow the migration of skilled jobs to low-wage countries say it will take a combination of actions affecting U.S. visa, trade policies and tax laws to stem the flow of jobs overseas...

...But the trend toward offshoring is "so overwhelming" that "some effort to try and put the brakes on it, to slow it down, consider what we are doing" is needed...

...The legislative attack is still in its early stages, but it's growing and could ultimately affect business processes if it succeeds...

24 February 2004 Job shift to India continues to hit headlines in the US

The Economic Times

...The US media is replete with stories on the phenomenon, charting how American jobs are being affected, but how Indians, especially English-speaking professionals are benefitting and American companies are cutting costs...

23 February 2004 Seeing offshore outsourcing from all sides

SearchDatabase.com

When it comes to offshore outsourcing, SearchOracle.com readers are as passionate about the issue as the IT community at large. They are also as divided. We asked readers to share their thoughts on the connection between outsourcing, U.S. job losses and reduced wages...

20 February 2004 Congressmen want benefits for laid-off IT workers

Network World Fusion

...Four Democrats plan to introduce a bill next week that would extend a government program called Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to high-tech and other service workers. TAA provides income support, job training, job searching and relocation assistance, as well as health care tax credits, to workers who have lost their jobs due to foreign trade...

With offshore outsourcing becoming a major political issue this year, the bill may generate some attention in Congress...

20 February 2004 Offshore outsourcing poses privacy perils

Computer World

Outsourcing jobs to offshore destinations can sharply increase data privacy risks and the complexity of managing that risk...

...As a result, companies need to ensure that overseas vendors are contractually tied to specific conditions regarding how data is transmitted, accessed, used, stored and shared...

18 February 2004 Despite surging economy, U.S. IT hiring continues to decline

Network World Fusion

...during January, U.S. companies added employees at the fastest rate in the last three years. So with all this economic surging, IT hiring must be finally on the rebound, right? Wrong...

...There are a number of likely reasons, but the simplest among them is continued cost-cutting...

...Offshore outsourcing may also be contributing to the stagnancy of the U.S. IT employment market. Although recent numbers show that offshore outsourcing still represents only a small part...

18 February 2004 Bank of America sets up Indian outsourcing subsidiary

Network World Fusion

...Bank of America is setting up a wholly owned subsidiary in Hyderabad, India, that will process some of the bank's back-office operations...

...U.S. banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, mutual fund and other financial services firms are planning to relocate more than 500,000 jobs offshore, representing 8% of their workforces...

12 February 2004 Bill may force companies to disclose offshoring plans

Computer World

...Senate Democrats today introduced legislation requiring companies to publicly disclose when they intend to move jobs offshore. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s bill would require any company that plans to lay off 15 or more workers and send those jobs overseas to disclose how many jobs are affected, where the jobs are going and why they are being offshored...

...“When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than to produce it domestically,” he said. “This allows the United States to devote its resources to more productive purposes.”...

11 February 2004 BearingPoint starts center in India with Covansys help

Network World Fusion

...is setting up a global development center (GDC) in Chennai, India, in partnership with Covansys...

..."Instead of starting from scratch, we evaluated different partners and selected Covansys to give us a jump-start in the market, so that we have an immediate CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Level 5 capability with a partner that has been in this business in India for a long time,"...

...BearingPoint plans to have its own wholly owned development center in Bangalore as well. When that center is started depends on demand...

11 February 2004 HP mulling South Korea R&D center

Network World Fusion

..."We're evaluating the possibility of an R&D center in Korea, but we haven't made any formal plans or confirmed any details,"...

09 February 2004 XANSA WINS MAJOR SUPPORT CONTRACT

MCN Direct

...Xansa chief executive Alistair Cox said: "This further strengthens Xansa's strategy of leveraging its significant offshore operations in India to service its customers globally, without the need for extensive local infrastructure."...

09 February 2004 India call centre staff bribed

Evening Standard

...In at least two recent cases, local IT staff working on the sub-continent for UK institutions were involved in what industry sources say were 'security issues' in what is described as the tiniest fraction of a far larger problem...

07 February 2004 Two legislators demand limits to offshore outsourcing

Star Tribune

Responding to reports that some state government work is being done by workers in India, two House DFL members on Friday called for legislation that could cancel the contracts of companies that do business for the state if they use overseas labor...

06 February 2004 Offshore Outsourcing Satisfies

The E-Business Executive Daily

A new survey conducted by the Weissman Center for International Banking at Baruch College and The Paaras Group (TPG) found that offshore outsourcing (simply called "offshoring" in the survey) is working for many adopters. The survey canvassed 38 adopter companies (30 from North America and the remainder from Europe)...

...Regardless of the offshoring model, the surveyed companies reported an 89 percent satisfaction rate (with 43 percent satisfied "in a major way"). Furthermore, 89 percent also plan to increase offsourcing...

...75 companies were slated to take part in this year's survey, but that the "offshore backlash" prompted many of them to abstain, even though the survey was anonymous...

04 February 2004 India to gain rail enquiry jobs

BBC News

...Around 150,000 people call the rail enquiries number every day. Under the new contracts - which begin in April - at least half of the calls taken by the enquiries line will be handled in India...

02 February 2004 Network advances help companies go offshore

Network World Fusion

..."It used to be that only the largest multi-national companies could afford to get started with offshore outsourcing. Today, cheaper, more reliable technology has put it within reach of just about every IT organization. They can't afford not to go offshore."...

02 February 2004 Career paths

Network World Fusion

The most vociferous objections to offshore outsourcing come from developers and other IT professionals who feel that their jobs are threatened. What they might not realize is the extent to which they can mitigate the effect by taking advantage of the new career paths that globalization is creating...

02 February 2004 Five phases of an ERP implementation:

Network World Fusion

...implementing large-scale enterprise applications, such as ERP and CRM , can be done to great advantage using a combination of onshore and offshore resources...

...The fourth phase is data migration, which involves populating the new ERP master file with data from legacy systems. Doane describes this as "real drudge work that's well suited to less-expensive offshore labor." Likewise system testing, the fifth and final phase...

02 February 2004 On again, off again

Network World Fusion

Savvy companies are mixing and matching onshore IT staffers with offshore developers to save money, speed up projects and keep customers happy...

01 February 2004 Offsource outsourcing: What is it?

Pioneer Press

The practice of using low-cost workers in countries such as India, China, Ireland and the Philippines to do service-related work...

...it's not known how much of the work was done overseas because the companies also have U.S. staff, including foreign engineers on temporary work visas...

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Offshore Outsourcing Press Releases

13 January 2004 European offshore outsourcing centre extends its arm across the Atlantic

ECODE

ECODE - The European Centre for Offshore Development have announced the launch of ECODE USA with the appointment of Atlanta based Bernard van der Lande (BVDL) Consulting as its partner for North America.

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News Reviews

Offshore Outsourcing News Review - 26 February 2004

When I agreed to write these little observations on the current offshore outsourcing news, little did I know what I was letting myself in for! Over the past few months the number of articles on offshore outsourcing published in the press and on the internet has been growing weekly, and to reflect this change we are now intending to update ECODE's Offshore News Digest at least twice a week.

One of the key issues this week seems to be Security, with the UK's Alliance and Leicester quoting this as one reason why they have not outsourced their call centres. This was also raised earlier in the week in Computer World. With impeccable timing, though long overdue, India has announced it is now considering adding Data Protection to it's IT Act 2000. However I doubt this is enough to address the concerns of the likes of Alliance and Leicester.

In the US, the legislation bandwagon is rolling and gathering pace, and the anti-outsourcing groups are joining together. For a small insight into what the people on the ground onshore and offshore think, this online debate originally from Search Oracle is worth reading.

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