Outsource Software
Reactions to Offshore Outsourcing
Even many offshore dissidents acknowledge that there’s sometimes a compelling economic case to be made in favor of offshoring, although they vigorously question its logic on other grounds. It doesn’t help, either, that outsourcing as a phenomenon—and offshore outsourcing, in particular—are linked in the public imagination with cost cutting, so much so that—rightly or wrongly—the desire to reduce costs is frequently cited as one of outsourcing’s most important drivers.
The simple upshot, Dachtera concludes, is that outsourcing—and particularly outsourcing of the offshore type—has certain costs. “[The] loss of customer goodwill, loss of customer loyalty, loss of customer mind-share, loss of market share … all these are consequences that companies must be prepared to face when they choose to displace U.S. workers and ship their jobs offshore.�
The point isn’t necessarily that these are like-kind exchanges, Zitzelberger and other outsourcing proponents say (in fact, Microsoft, Intel, and Google, at least, are all bullish offshore outsourcers), but that free and uninhibited trade helps create programming jobs in undeveloped economies such as that of the Indian subcontinent even as it fosters the emergence of new markets in established economies.
In many cases, he says, offshore outsourcing does deliver lower costs—although in still other cases organizations might be hard-pressed to outsource some activities. “Development using modern tools is inexpensive, but some more esoteric legacy technologies might not find a market. Outsourcing isn’t a magic wand, and there are real privacy issues that almost always add concerns.â€? In the final analysis, he concludes, outsourcing isn’t something an organization should undertake lightly. “For non-trivial projects, it will never be as easy or as cheap as you hope.â€?
Excerpts from Stephen Swoyer at Enterprise Systems
