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The Coppenhagen Consensus: Reading Adam Smith in Denmark
By Robert Kuttner, German Marshall Fund, May 13, 2008 (originally published in May/June issue of Foreign Affairs)

Denmark has forged a social and economic model that couples the best of the free market with the best of the welfare state, transcending tradeoffs between dynamism and security, efficiency and equality. Other countries may not be able to simply copy the Danish model of social democracy, but it nonetheless offers important lessons for governments confronting the dilemmas of globalization.

>> More Details  |  created on: 05/13/2008


The Fragility of Perfection: When Supply Chains Go Wrong
The Economist, May 1, 2008

Disruptions in the global supply chains imposed by inflation abroad, for instance, may threaten the cost-effectiveness of outsourcing.  In the long run, instability within supply chains may be a huge strategic risk given the high degree of interdependence amongst trading partners.

>> More Details  |  created on: 05/13/2008


Krugman's Conundrum
The Economist, April 17, 2008

The elusive link between trade and wage inequality.

>> More Details  |  created on: 05/15/2008


China and India go to Africa
By Harry G. Broadman, Free Republic, March 16, 2008 (from Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008 issue)

Economic activity between Africa and Asia, especially China and India, is booming like never before.  If the problems and imbalances this sometimes creates are managed well, this expanding engagement could be an unprecedented opportunity for Africa's growth and for its integration into the global economy.

>> More Details  |  created on: 05/14/2008


What Will a Recession Mean for IT Outsourcing?
By Deb Perelman, eweek.com, March 6, 2008

Analysts don't think a recession is likely to slow the pace at which U.S. IT jobs are going overseas.

>> More Details  |  created on: 05/14/2008


Global Outsourcing to Grow 8% in 2008
By Nick Heath, Business Week, January 10, 2008

Research firm Gartner expects healthy growth in both IT and business process outsourcing, but says companies will split up contracts among several providers and countries.

>> More Details  |  created on: 05/14/2008


Gartner: Strong growth for offshoring predicted for 2008
By Linda Tucci, SearchCIO.com, December 20, 2007

Just in time for the holiday season comes a list of the top 30 countries for offshore services, courtesy of Gartner Inc. No need to check it twice.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/20/2007


Outsourcing Predictions for 2008… in a nutshell
By Phil Fersht, ZDNet, December 20, 2007

Let’s not beat around the bush…here’s what happening next year in the “O” world.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/20/2007


10 Outsourcing Predictions for 2008 (and One to Grow On)
By Stephanie Overby, CIO, December 19, 2007

From widening currency gaps to industry mergers and acquisitions to an expanding range of outsourcing services and destinations, the new year should keep IT service providers and customers on their toes.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/19/2007


2008 Globalization Trends
NeoIT, December 19, 2007

NeoIT’s newly issued research brief 2008 Globalization Trends, examines the trends that will shape the services globalization market in the coming year. An economic downturn in the U.S. will increase demand for global services in 2008 as the Fortune 1000 seek to reduce costs, but service providers will encounter substantial challenges to satisfy sourcing needs because of the falling dollar and acute labor shortage in India.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/19/2007


Outsourcing Rivalry Doesn't Faze Malaysia
By Lee Min Keong, BusinessWeek, December 14, 2007

To combat competition from the Philippines, the country is positioning itself as a high-value rather than low-cost destination for voice services.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/14/2007


Multisourcing: using the world's talents
By Glenn Warren, Computing, December 13, 2007

Outsourcing has become such a part of everyday business vocabulary that it is easy to overlook the extent of its development.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/13/2007


Offshoring Destinations
Offshoring Times, December 5, 2007

India continues to be the most attractive destination for offshoring of services such as information technology, business processes and call centres, a global management-consulting firm has said. It remains the best offshore destination by a wide margin even if wage inflation and the mergence of lower-cost countries decreased its overall lead, the annual ranking by consulting firm A T Kearney has said.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/05/2007


Global Sourcing 2010
By Juhi Bhambal, Global Services, December 4, 2007

In Nov. 1997, exactly ten years and one month ago, GE set up its captive outsourcing center in Gurgaon, near Delhi in India. That was the beginning of American corporates’ business practice of sourcing technology and business services from low-cost destinations.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/04/2007


Outsourcing moves closer to home
By Denise Dubie, Network World, December 3, 2007

As stories circulate about the cultural barriers U.S. companies hit when outsourcing IT to locations in India, offshore service providers are moving some operations back into the United States — an effort they hope will increase their appeal to U.S. companies.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/03/2007


Brazil Seeks Outsourcing Dominance
By Gina Ruiz, Workforce Management, December 3, 2007

No single nation dominates the IT and business process outsourcing industry in the Western Hemisphere, and Brazil is eager to claim the title. It ultimately wants to compete with India, and industry promoters say proximity and cultural similarities to the U.S. make it a better fit than India or other outsourcing nations in Asia.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/03/2007


Offshore Locations Lack Biz-friendly Laws
By Imrana Khan, Global Services, November 30, 2007

While China, one of the top offshoring destinations, for instance, did quite well on the 2008 Doing Business index this year than the last year, the country still needs to introduce more reforms to make itself one with easiest business regulations. Also, the study maps quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights across 178 economies.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/03/2007


German firms retreat from the eastern front
By Michael Woodhead, Times Online, November 26, 2007

IT seemed at the time as though nothing but success and profit would stem the sweep of German companies forging into eastern Europe. But now a German retreat is under way and companies are trudging home with stories of poor quality, disloyalty and crime.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/26/2007


Continental shifts
By Nic Paton, The Guardian, November 26, 2007

Moments before sitting down to write this feature, my phone rang. "Is that Mr, er, Patyon?" came a crackly, distant voice. It was, inevitably, my bank making another "courtesy call". It wasn't the guy's fault of course and, when you bear in mind at that point it was the middle of the night in India, hardly a pleasant job.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/26/2007


Increasing Demand for Demand Management
NeoIT, November 19, 2007

Successful global services negotiations require complex preparation. The following three steps ensure that the negotiating teams receive consistent support across the enterprise, from corporate executives to legal and financial experts.

>> More Details  |  created on: 12/19/2007


Business Risks in Outsourcing
By Tan Shong Ye, Paul Zanker And David Beattie, CIO Asia, November 19, 2007

From recent surveys done by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and others, it is clear that Chief Executive Officers' zeal for using outsourcing as a business management tool remains strong globally.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/19/2007


Seven Secrets of Successful Globalizers
By Atul Vashistha, NeoIT, November 19, 2007

In the course of my career consulting companies on services globalization, I've found that there are seven important practices common among those companies that successfully globalize...

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/19/2007


Survey: What Are CEOs Thinking?
By Tim Berry, The Huffington Post, November 19, 2007

To me, this is good news. McKinsey's latest CEO survey (registration required) shows that enterprise CEOs worry about global warming and environmental issues these days, where their main concern was about public opinion against so-called offshoring. I say this is good news because the environment threat is real and what this survey called offshoring is nothing more than a natural phenomena of changing economics in different countries.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/19/2007


Your Computers Are Down? No Problema
By John Hanc, The New York Times, November 15, 2007

Outsourcing customer service and help-desk function is hardly novel. But few businesses have gone to Colombia; even fewer small businesses have integrated off-site offices as neatly in their operations as this six-year-old computer service company, which serves around 200 small and midsize businesses in the New York area through a voice-over Internet protocol call to Bogotá and keeps a videoconferencing portal on from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/17/2007


Report From India: Experienced IT Pros Earn $36,000
By Mary Hayes Weier, Information Week, November 13, 2007

The days of work going offshore to Indian IT pros earning $15,000 a year? They're gone. Now salaries are at least double that, according to a seemingly reliable source.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/13/2007


Making Joint Ventures Work in Outsourcing
By Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Global Services, November 6, 2007

ACTO with business sense is rare. But Paul Lanham is no regular CTO. Before he recently left Jones Apparel, the $4.742 billion designer, marketer and wholesaler of branded apparel, footwear and accessories, he had twin titles: He was the CTO of the company, and the CEO of HCL Retail Business Solutions, a joint venture between Jones Apparel Group and HCL, a leading offshore IT-services provider.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/06/2007


The next wave of globalisation: Offshoring R&D to India and China
By Stephanie Overby, CIO, November 6, 2007

Entrepreneur-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa is up front about his use of offshoring and importing foreign talent in a previous professional life as founder and CEO of two technology companies. "I was one of the first to outsource software development to Russia in the early '90s. I was one of the first to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A.," Wadhwa says. "Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper."

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/06/2007


The Second Decade Of Offshore Outsourcing: Where We're Headed
By Mary Hayes Weier , Information Week, November 5, 2007

Execs now prefer to call it 'globalization.' Whatever the name, it's gaining steam and bringing new risks and requiring new strategies.

>> More Details  |  created on: 11/05/2007


Say Si For ITO
By Imrana Khan, Global Services, October 30, 2007

Instead of grooving to Saturday night fever, Costa Rica was eagerly waiting for the results of the country’s first-ever referendum on Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the U.S.A. to be announced the next day.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/30/2007


Second Wave of Outsourcing
By Bala Girisaballa, Deccan Herald, October 30, 2007

Today globalisation fuelled outsourcing has evolved so much that both customers and service providers have matured and standardised their engagement models. Outsourcing has become a de-facto strategy of getting work done.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/30/2007


Global Game Development
By Russell Metcalf, Global Services, October 29, 2007

While most global destinations offer creative and tech talent, the balance of cost against quality differs dramatically across countries when sourcing game-development functions. As developers discover gaming talent in new geographies, they are also benefitting from cost benefits.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/29/2007


A Security Focus on China Outsourcing
By Richard Lawhorn, Net Security, October 25, 2007

Business process outsourcing (BPO), such credit card transactions, medical claims data entry and financial transactions, has been around for a number of years. The act of outsourcing these functions offshore to India has become increasingly more viable since a great amount of progress has been achieved in developing the information security framework to protect customer data.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/25/2007


Changing trends and landscape in BPOs
Deccan Herald, October 23, 2007

Offshoring of business processes is now a proven strategy across all successful organisations. The key differentiator is the pace of transition to low cost countries and the pace of movement up the value chain in the work sent offshore. Sunish Sharma and Kaushik Mazumdar analyse how the BPO scene will change in the future.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/23/2007


Some firms replace offshoring with onshoring
By Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2007

Small U.S. towns can match India in cost. Northrop Grumman plans up to 50 sites for tech support. Dell opens a center in Idaho.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/23/2007


Indian Outsourcers Do More Business Process Work
By Mary Hayes Weier , Information Week, October 22, 2007

India-based IT services providers have been trying for years to move up the proverbial value chain, from basic software development to more collaborative and strategic work. There's some evidence they're succeeding.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/22/2007


India's Call-Center Jobs Go Begging
By SUDHIN THANAWALA, Time, October 22, 2007

Call centers are symbols of India's economic boom. With Anglicized names and feigned Western accents, Indians handle credit card problems and troubleshoot computers, collect debts and conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Over the past decade or so, relatively high salaries in the call center sector have attracted thousands of applicants across the country. But now the boom is going bust because India's college graduates and young job seekers just don't want to be bothered with the business anymore.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/22/2007


2008 IT Outlook: 'Less than Comforting'
By Aaron Ricadela, BusinessWeek, October 18, 2007

As the tech industry girds for third-quarter earnings, analysts are turning their attention to next year. Many don't like what they see.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/18/2007


Adding sugar
The Economist, October 18, 2007

“HCL he yokoso!” is how visitors are greeted at an office of HCL Technologies in Noida, a dirty suburb of Delhi. The phrase means “Welcome to HCL” in Japanese, and the neat line of young Indian employees bow deeply to underline the point: HCL is ready to do business with Japan, the world's biggest computer-services market after America.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/18/2007


Indian Outsourcing Has Peaked: Debate
BusinessWeek, October 18, 2007

Their status as red-hot offshoring destinations notwithstanding, Bangalore, Mumbai, and the rest can expect a slowdown soon. Pro or con?

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/18/2007


Outsourcing in China Today
By Karen E. Klein, BusinessWeek, October 16, 2007

Every week seems to bring news of another recall or safety issue involving a product manufactured in China (BusinessWeek, 8/17/07). But despite the highly publicized problems, U.S. companies will continue moving their production to China, says Peter Zapf, vice-president of community development for Global Resources, a Hong Kong trade show producer and consultancy.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/16/2007


Three Pragmatic Steps To An Outsourcing Strategy
By Richard Peynot, Forrester, October 11, 2007

To help companies design an appropriate and efficient IT sourcing strategy, Forrester has identified six basic outsourcing models that fit most outsourcing situations and a three-step methodology that facilitates the integration of all the critical factors that they should consider before outsourcing. This document provides the basic guidelines that help companies identify and assess the influence of the important factors concerning the existing internal IT group: organizational characteristics, the importance of IT for business competitiveness, IT resource management, and IT economics.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/11/2007


The three steps to outsourcing
By Andrew Parker, vnunet.com, October 11, 2007

Companies that frequently use IT outsourcing fail to co-ordinate well across multiple contracts, meaning that not all their provider relationships pull in one direction.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/11/2007


BPO may face manpower shortage in next 2 years: ASSOCHAM
By Deepak Kumar Mohanty, Newstrack India, October 8, 2007

A few days back a study conducted by the Global Services magazine of CyberMedia featured five of Indian cities among the top 50 most emerging outsourcing destinations in 2007. But the Indian industrial body ASSOCHAM has recently expressed its concern over the shortage of manpower in BPO industry in the near future.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/08/2007


Outsourcing in Local Time
By Marisa Taylor, NeoIT, October 8, 2007

Last year, a frustrated Matt Pérez joked about outsourcing software work to Mexico instead of India, and before he knew it, he had the beginnings of a business plan. As a veteran Silicon Valley software executive, Mr. Pérez knew all about sending jobs to India.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/08/2007


Talent War 2012: U.S.A. Set to Win
By Imrana Khan, Global Services, October 8, 2007

In spite of facing tough competition from China and the U.K., the U.S.A. will remain the best performer in this "who-is-more-skilled" future battle, says a recent study. The U.S. labor market is set to become less open and flexible over the next five years amid fears of terrorism

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/08/2007


IBM Tries to Patent Offshoring
By Stephanie Overby , CIO, October 4, 2007

A recent patent application from IBM Global Services is making the email rounds in outsourcing circles -- and beyond.

>> More Details  |  created on: 10/04/2007