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IBM Snags Leading Indian Outsourcing Firm
theodp writes "In one of the biggest foreign acquisitions in India in the past few years, according to ZDNet, IBM will pay an estimated $150-$200 million to acquire Daksh, India's third-largest back-office services company. The deal will give IBM access to privately held Daksh's 6,000 employees, who mainly offer call center services to 13 clients, including Amazon.com."
I wonder if this will result in more layoffs from the company that once boasted it would never do so. How times change.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Remember, IBM never gets into a business that others haven't already proven profitable.
... but then the Sun guy couldn't use the paper towel to open the door meaning he's handling everyone elses vile germs on the door handle.
Trolling is a art,
I cant figure out what any logical person could have against outsourcing.
Yeah I know abt the diminshing jobs in the IT sector (And I guess I am writing this since I dont work in the It sector).
After all if IBM can get something done for a fraction of the price in the US why wouldnt or shouldnt they go for it.
This is not Soviet Russia you know
It seems to me that IBM may be doing this not for the sole reason to outsource, but to gain market share outside the US in terms of government contracts. The Indian Government is fiercely isolationist when it comes to contracting out IT and other services, and IBM acquiring Daksh may just get their foot in the door.
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Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
Of course if IBM had bought a similarly staffed US or European company, it would have cost 5 times more.
*rimshot*
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
these 6,000 employees wouldn't be taking tech jobs from the U.S.
No, that part has already been done.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Well in looking at the numbers in the various articles IBM has 9K currently in India, now another 6K and a couple months ago annouced they will be outsourcing 4.6K current U.S. jobs to India. They might as well change their name. Also note their latest ad's on TV for IBM HR services. Guess they have the most experience at dumping US citizens and moving the jobs overseas.
Guess Bush and his CEO cronnies are to short sighted to realize in the long run they are gutting middle America. Whose going to buy all the products when middle America is unemployed. Unemployed people don't pay taxes, there goes the bulk of the tax base.
Then the security issues when corporate America's date is now being accessed all over the world.
Yes, let's hear it for fill-in-the-blank mad lib type jokes with interchangable groups to make fun of.
Like this google search...
But I don't feel that people in developed nations need to apologize for the fruits of decades (if not centuries) of economic- and lifestyle-effecting investments, or for the fact that they have access to abundant natural resources (v. Saharan Africa, for instance), or whatever else is blamed for the lots of the impoverished nations.
This is not to claim that overt actions haven't had an effect on impoverished nations, or that developed nations shouldn't have an interest in them, just that apologizing for it is unnecessary.
liar...
Ok what if i start an american computer manufacturing company. all parts are made here in the us.
That $1000.00 Dell, my equilivant will be $6500.00
there is no way in hell you would buy it because it has a Made in the USA sticker on it. Americans are cheap bastards that love their dirt cheap computers and electronics. They WILL NOT pay a premium for domestic products, that was proven without a doubt in the 80's when textiles went to hell as you could buy what you wanted at 1/3rd the price from overseas even AFTER the government protection fees were paid.
I so love to shoot down patriotic jerks that wave the flag and talk like they would do what it takes to save american jobs and support america.. but I'll bet that over 80% of what you own was made, manufacturered and or assembled outside the USA... espically clothing and electronics.. hell your carpet in your house is more than likely a south american product.
Yes even most american cars are Assembled in either Canada or Mexico, or had major portions assembled outside the country.. Many FORD midsize cars are completely made by the KIA corperation in korea or other forign car companies... My family was big in the automakers, a 3 generation UAW family decimated by ford and GM whoring out assembly and manufacturing to mexico and other countries.. no love for those companies that destroyed towns os they can chase the almightly dollar... go visit Flint or Pontiac michigan and see what those great american companies did to the american worker.
so until you are willing to pay a significant premium for the MADE IN USA mantra... drop the act.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
When will our nations captains of industry realize that putting every American out of work is not conducive to getting their products sold to Americans!?!?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Maybe working in India isn't all its cracked up to be after all - according to their web site, to work in customer care for Daksh, you have to be between 21-25, and to be a team lead you have to be between 23-27 years old. No age discrimination protection! What happens if you are a customer rep and turn 26? (prolly a moot point, since most of those folks quit after a short tenure). Do they fire you?
We can't unionize, because there are simply too many people who can do what we (systems administrators, network administrators, programmers, etc) can do. They might not do it as well but if it takes them twice as long at one fourth the wage that will be good enough to most people.
However getting worried about this is to see the hill and miss the mountain. Outsourcing is just a tiny little worry. What happens as computers continue to get easier to network, and programming continues to move toward open models with users contributing back source for free? We're all gonna be out of work before long. Now admittedly computers don't manage themselves, but that's because very little effort (comparatively) has been spent on systems maintenance automation as compared to everything else. Now that companies are working hard on maximizing uptime and making it a primary priority, I think we're going to see a return to the olden days of receptionist-as-sysop. A consultant will be called in occasionally to fix the hard problems.
Solution? Realize that Specialization is for Insects. You don't have to take things to Longian proportions where you can fix a computer, pilot a spaceship, knock off one or two fine pieces of ass and still make it home in time to cook dinner and play the bagpipes during supper, all while wearing a tux coat and a kilt, but only being good at one thing is a big mistake. In addition all us non-polyglots are going to be in big trouble in the "global economy" which is only getting more global - as many of us have found as we became rapidly unemployed. Actually, it was the dot-bomb that got me, not outsourcing, but I can only assume that outsourcing has made it harder for me to get work.
Lately I've been working on auto body and paint skills, as well as other automotive stuff. A decent body and paint guy can make six figures if he's willing to put in 40-50 hours, is very good at at least one thing and pretty good at a few more things, and lives someplace people have money. It used to be easy to reach/approach six figures in computers, but not any more. If you make that kind of money now it's because you understand the deep voodoo in some complex system, or because you got astronomically lucky.
Of course, cars aren't going to be a reliable way to make money FOREVER. Raise your hand if you thought computers were the sure money... Now lower your hand if you still have a job working with computers that keeps you above the poverty line. Let's compare counts... Now, lower your hand if you still enjoy your job. Count again, and note how many of the hands are still up... Someday the world will swing away from being car-heavy, simply because it will become uneconomical. You might argue that this is true today but as a form of transportation it is hard to beat cars. If you get a relatively efficient one (read: just about anything japanese that isn't an SUV or a full size truck) then you will get very good mileage, the system requires little maintenance, and almost anywhere you go, public transportation is crappy and expensive. It costs $3 for a day pass in Santa Cruz which has a merely mediocre bus system (A very few buses run until 1am, which is not too bad.) $3 will get you about a gallon and a half of gas right now, which around town in my girlfriend's honda will take you probably a good 30 miles. (It might take you almost as far in my 240SX, which has a stock motor, if I wasn't up on the throttle all the time.) But it's only a matter of time before cars swing around again - They, however, will probably continue to hold their place of prominence longer than I am alive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If your Amazon or several others, your board is looking at each other saying, IBM owns our help desk? Of course IBM would never use that leverage to make anyone change their practices or attitude, now would they.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Nah. It was a move to get a bite of the outsourcing market, to get a "head-start". Except that they're about 3-4 years late in getting a head start, so it's more like a desperate move to get back in the game. IBM, PwC, Cap Gemini and the like have been left biting the dust after the dot crash when they suddenly noticed that the indian outsourcing companies stole the rug from under their feet in many markets.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Many of us wear clothes produced in China, drive Japanese cars, and put cheap foreign memory in our assembled overseas computers. A few mundane IT jobs go overseas and then we are up in arms, demanding special favors from the government. I don't get it.
"IBM will do you HR for you so you can focus on your company"
I remember when IBM Global services took over the already F-d HR and payroll provided by a now bankrupt shill for a F-d mutual fund company. The disaster could not have been any worse.
For the first few months, paychecks were totally wrong. We had state taxes taken out for two states (where we were and where HQ was) or just HQ state taxes were taken out. [Sorry, I resent paying MA taxes particulary since I don't live or work there.] It took me 9 months to get a pay stub for my last pay check. Finally, I spent 2 days working at an office in a local city which was shortly thereafter closed down. I ended up having to pay city income tax for that city for my entire year's wages there due to an accounting screw up.
In my expreience PWC consultants are no better than Accenture (Andersen). I remember meeting some former consultants at a trade show when I stopped to see a demo of a well known business software program. This was at 2 PM and the show had been open since 10 AM. Since their network was down and they hadn't a clue how to fix it, they showed me a canned demo instead of the real thing. What a waste of time. [True to form, the booth critter was young, female, attractive and perky, but she didn't know s---.]
1-And outsourcing will improve this how?
Because India has always produced high quality software. At least that's the perception. A quarter of the price and four times the quality is a pretty hard deal to pass up.
2-Some but if you read through the site above, you'll note that a lot, in unemployemnt are NOT "DeVry this" or "ITT" that.
Everyone is affected by this, MIT grads along with junior college dropouts. But when entry level jobs start at $60K, experienced workers are going to want a proportionately higher salary.
There is a cost to non-local development in the form of inefficient management, communication problems, training issues, and with overseas development, customer satisfaction as well. When the cost for a local worker is only 50% to 100% more than the remote worker, it can often be cost effective to stay local. But when the cost of local is 500% to 750% more, then it's much easier to justify going to for the cheap labor.
3-If free trade was about Level Playing Fields, then we would be insisting that India and other countries would raise their standards, instead of lowering ours.
This is always the argument that is raised. But we don't have any say over the internal policies of another nation. We only have control over our own. Why should we punish India for accepting our dollars, when at least some of the problem is our own damned fault?
A level playing field doesn't mean that everyone is equally handicapped. It means that the rules of the game are the same for all participants. The distinction is subtle, to be sure. But when we impose additional rules upon ourselves that we demand of no one else, then that is just handicapping ourselves.
When more than a half of my income goes towards taxes (income, sales, property, etc., both local and national), then something is seriously out of whack. Add to this the non-monetary cost of bureaucratic paperwork, and there's quite a bit of room to shrug off a few of those self-imposed handicaps.
To be absolutely crass and selfish about it, I would rather have a job and pay into my own retirement fund, then to be unemployed with social security. I can live with a few more potholes in the roads if it means I can be employed.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!