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Oracle To Add R&D Centers In China
stoborrobots writes "Reuters is reporting that the big O is planning to open new R&D centres in china. Initially aiming at the domestic Chinese market, there is potential to resell the technologies developed beyond the borders... Is this the next wave of outsourcing?"
The US has some fairly daunting nuclear non-proliferation export controls on software and hardware to nations such as China. Larry Ellison, a heavy contributor to the Democratic Party, might be encountering difficulty in obtaining the necessary export licenses, so maybe this is a workaround for those export controls.
True (engineering) talent is universal and is always in demand everywhere*. If you're good enough, there will be a place for you.
* obvious exaggeration, but you get the point
That's a much bigger deal than just outsourcing. It says alot about how clever Oracle thinks those from the US are.
Perhaps too many grow up thinking they ought to be playing tennis or being musicians. Those are the most important people, right?
Those are the images the media gives them, so it must be true.
Not really. Most people think that China will be the "Next India" when it comes to IT/BPO, but there are lots of reasons why they won't be.
1. Language. Indian languages come from Sanskrit, which according to all credible sources is a sister language to Ancient Greek and Latin (Dental in English refers to Teeth. Tooth in french is "Dent". In Hindi, the equivalent is "Dant" which is pronounced almost like the french word. The same applies to counting and numbers. This, coupled with 250 years of British Rule, means that Indians pick up English/Western European languages a lot faster than Chinese (poor accents and grammar aside).
2. Culture. Chinese people as a rule are more homogenous than Indians, and by all anecdotal evidence are much more disciplined. This mindset means that replicating a manufacturing process comes very easy to them. Life in India, however consists of "Jugad". This is a hindi word which can loosely be translated as "Improvisation" or to a person in the CS field it would be called a "Hack". As much as we'd like to pretend that programming and development are simple ordered processes, we all know this is far from the truth. There are many solutions which require some improvisation, and this again means that Indians are better suited to software.
3. Government. India is a democratic republic, following a parliamentary system based on the British system. It has the three branches (legislative, executive, judicial) that are familiar to most (Western and) other democracies. China is more of a pseudo-communist/totalitarian-capitalist. This makes it easier for businessmen attempting to outsource, as they can operate in a framework they are familiar with. (In practise, this hasn't worked out, because India has not been going out of its way to attract business like China was doing...it is definitely easier to make fast decisions quickly in a communist country than in a democracy.
Anyway those are my two cents. Thank you for your time
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What protection does Oracle have from Chinese workers stealing their intellectual property and using it in China, or worse, in a Chinese company coming back to compete against Oracle in the States?
Hopefully, no protection whatsoever.
Oracle competes on excellence and through continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. The day that they call for protectionism is the day that they've started resting on their laurels and deserve to die.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
That's a somewhat close-minded view of China, IMHO.
1. Language -- It doesn't really matter that the Indian languages come from the same roots. They're sufficiently different now that most Americans can't understand Indian anymore than they can understand French, Italian, or for that matter, Ancient Greek and Latin. Or Chinese. One of us will have to learn to communicate with the other, regardless of where they're from.
There are Chinese people who can speak perfect English. There are Indians who can too. And, of course, there are also people from both countries who speak with very heavy accents that are difficult (for Americans) to understand. In any case, learning English isn't an impossible task for either country. They just have to provide more English education to their citizens.
2. This may or may not be true. I do not know enough about Indian and Chinese cultures to say. But even if it were, it's overgeneralizing to say that they simply can't do it. The Chinese people aren't born with an innate inability to improvise/innovate, if that's what you're suggesting. History provides a number of Chinese inventions, like gunpowder, iron, wheelbarrows, the abacus, the compass, moveable type (and maybe paper, though I'm not sure), etc. I can't think of any significant Chinese discoveries/inventions in recent times, but I can't think of any Indian ones either.
3. Well, it's not a big problem right now. Look at all the "Made in China" products we already have. Unless you're suggesting that the government is going to be more of a hindrance to R&D than they are to manufacturing. But even then, the government can change -- as it once did in order to accomodate foreign companies seeking manufacturing.
If you've ever had to create an Oracle application with support for Chinese you know that it's quite an ordeal. The core of the database just isn't suited for a language that, among other things, doesn't have spaces.
It makes perfectly sense to open an R&D department in China, since there's a huge market there, and of course Oracle wants to fully support chinese.
Underholdning.info
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Although I agree with you, I have to say that I can't agree with the second point you mention. China is not a very homgenous country. It is true that the Han chinese - the top dogs - try to stress homogenity in China, partly to cover up ther (former) imperialistic behaviour. Truth is there is a huge diversity in ethnicity : turkish (uygurs), persian (parsi), arabic, tibetan, nepali, mongoloid (in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia) etc. etc. Also in religious sense I guess there are as many different religions in China as there are in India (muslims, Nestorians, zarathustrians, animists etc. etc.). Again these religious minorities are considered either futile barbarians or a threat to the stablitity of China as a whole by the Chinese (han-)government.
I agree with your stance on protectionism. No government should slug their people to support an inefficient industry.
... because they're getting paid slave wages while working twice the hours that we do.
But your argument that outsourcing is OK rests on one very flawed assumption: that the people of the world are nothing more than labour.
From the point of view of the elite who own basically everything, people are just labour. But for the rest of us, there are some very important issues underneath the surface of outsourcing and globalization.
Look at the countries where the jobs are going. There's a good reason why these workers are more 'productive' than workers in developed counties
The companies that take advantage of the lack of various military dictatorships Indonesia ( until recently ) and China etc claim that they need to do this in order to remain competitive. This is partly right. It is true that as soon as one company starts using slave labour there are economic pressures on the others. Individual companies don't see many alternative in this situation. This is why we have governments. When the market fails to uphold the values a society decides are important, governments should step in and insist on these values being upheld. They can do this by making sure that foreign workers are paid according to award wages in the company's home country instead of the point of production.
If foreign workers can product a better / cheaper product while being these award wages instead of slave wages, then I see less problems with outsourcing.
There are other problems. I have read of many cases where a company will set up a sweat shop in one city, attracting labour from far and wide. Many people leave their farms and families because of severe drought and hardship, and flock to the city for a new chance. The company stays in the city for years. A whole economy grows around the sweat shop, and tens of thousands of people rely on the sweat shop for survival. Then the company makes a deal with some other 3rd world country for even cheaper labour, and splits, leaving these tens of thousands of people to rot. There are no other jobs. There are no farms to go back to; the bank now owns them. Who is responsible? The company is only following 'market conditions'. But the company is directly responsible for far more deaths than what the US is screaming over after your 2 towers came crumbling down. Both situations were cold, calculated decisions.
Globalisation, when described by a right-wing apologist, sounds like it might even work. But it has failed in every single host country it's been tried in, unless you ask the local corrupt governments, or the companies taking all the profits back to the US.
Exactly, thats all American culture is: A mixture of predominantly European culture, with some new inventions..
As an american living and working in china for the last six months, I have to say that you are generally right, but you forget one thing...there are a significant number of Chinese who immigrated to the US/canada/england, usually after going to college there, and are now moving back to China because of the economic opportunities and the fact that many of their family and friends are still here in china. Working for a company like Oracle, or any foreign company, they can get paid maybe somewhat below US salary, but since everything is so cheap here, they can usually effectively double their salary in purchase power parity, and have more opportunities to move into manager and high positions in the company.
.5% of those people are not homogenous that is still a shitload of people.
It is very true that chinese are generally rather homogenous, and I know many engineering and other students who routinely copy each others' assignments. But another thing you have to remember is that there are 1.3 billion people here and if
As far as the language, that's a big issue here, and their english is generally pretty bad, but as more and more students go abroad for college (since a lot more can afford it now) and that literally every chinese person i know is constantly trying to improve their english, that will become less of a factor.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
And that's where I disagree with you. I believe China is able to do as well as India if it chooses to try. That does not mean India is unable to innovate. I believe both countries can, as long as they set their minds on it. India has, and has been doing okay so far, and I think China can too if they wanted to.
And yes, while I am American, I lived in Asia most of my life -- near China, incidentally, which is why I know a little bit about it. I do not watch Fox News and the only reason I don't know anything about Indian contributions is because I simply never looked. I never claimed they didn't have any.
It doesn't matter how many languages they speak the fact is that if they have to learn English, they will. (FYI, there are also regional differences in Chinese languages/"dialects") The same goes for China, even if it's not for the same reasons (i.e. having to learn it to be able to communicate with the outside world, not for internal communications). Besides, how does the manufacturing business there currently work if the situation is as bas as you describe? Nobody would be able to communicate enough to get anything made.
Take a look at Japan. Formerly an isolationalist country with a culture and language different from America's. They had to overcome those obstacles, and they did, and now they're one of the world's leaders in electronics. I think India, China, and possibly other countries that I can't think of at the moment -- all have a chance.
For about half of the 185 nations that appear in the book, no studies are available. In those cases, the authors estimated by taking averages of the IQs of surrounding nations. For example, the authors arrived at a figure of 84 for El Salvador by averaging their calculations of 79 for Guatemala and 88 for Colombia.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Cisco's source was stolen long time ago by a Chinese firm that makes exact copies of their routers and runs Cisco's software on them.
This is BS. Sure, in high school, the jocks get more respect than the nerds, but it all changes in college. While the jocks are busy stocking shelves at the local grocery store, everyone else who wants a real education and a real job has gone to college, and a good percentage of those are trying to get good grades.
The reason you see so few Americans in science and engineering programs is because it simply doesn't make sense to go into them for most people. For many types of engineering (especially Computer and Electrical), a degree in these fields is a fast track to unemployment, unless you plan to move to Bangalore as soon as you graduate. Even if you do get a job, it's not going to pay very well, and it's not going to last very long. At my megacorp job, there are no engineers over age 35, only managers. Why would anyone want to enter a field like this? You can enjoy your college experience more in some other field of study, and get a much more stable job.
Science isn't any better. Suppose you work your ass off and get some degrees in physics. Where are you going to work with those? Driving a taxicab maybe. If you get a PhD, you could become a professor, which is about the only real use for a degree in science. Of course, then you have to deal with the whole "publish or perish" thing and other problems with academia that have already been detailed in recent Slashdot stories.
The sad reality is that, if you're very technically inclined and have absolutely no desire or aptitude for management (which would be a great recipe for an engineer or scientist), your best bet for a career is to do a couple years of college to get a real education which you didn't get in the horrible US public school system, then go to a trade school and become an auto mechanic, plumber, electrician, or HVAC repairperson. Your pay will be at least as good as an engineer, and you can actually stick with your career for as long as you wish, without worrying about some CEO replacing you with offshored labor. Even better, it's not that hard to start your own small company with your skills (with you as the only employee if you like), and make even more money.