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Oracle To Add R&D Centers In China

Posted by timothy on from the you-mean-there's-data-in-china dept.

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?"

17 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Simple Question, Simple Answer by jmt9581 · · Score: 4, Funny
    "Is this the next wave of outsourcing?"

    Yes.

    --

    My blog

    1. Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer by tarunthegreat2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

      --
      My Favourite Meme
    2. Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer by mc6809e · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is one thing that can't be outsourced. Culture.

      Don't be so sure. People are surprisingly quick to adopt the cultures of others.

      That happens to be one of Radical Islams greatest fears: cultural imperialism. Our ideas about freedom have been called "Murderous Germs".

      From an article about the origins of fundamentalist Islam:

      In his essay "Between Yesterday and Today," Banna [founder of the Muslim Brotherhood] wrote that the colonialist Europeans had expropriated the resources of the Islamic lands and corrupted them with "their murderous germs":

      "They imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with
      their liquors, their theaters, their dance halls, their amusements, their
      stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and
      their vices. . . . The day must come when the castles of this materialistic
      civilization will be laid low upon the heads of their inhabitants. "

      The Brotherhood's slogan was, and remains, "God is our objective; the Koran
      is our constitution; the prophet is our leader; struggle is our way; and
      death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations."

      Or how about Osama's Letter to America:

      (2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

      (a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

      [snip]

      (iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

      [snip]

      Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

      If culture couldn't be outsourced, terrorists would have must less to be angry about.

    3. Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer by tarunthegreat2 · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's nothing close-minded about it. I'm simply saying India has the strengths conducive to software, whereas China is better with the hardware. The reason you don't know about any Indian inventions is because you must be American, and have never seen it on Fox News. Chess, and some significant additions to Mathematics originated in India. On top of there is Vedic Mathematics. And just because "Indian" is incomprehensible to you, doesn't mean it is to others. There is NO "Indian". People in India speak 28 different languages. The fact that there are so many, and also the fact that they all want their language to be prominent forces all of them to learn English. because English is not a particular to any region of India, so there is no bias associated with it.

      --
      My Favourite Meme
    4. Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer by JBdH · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer by Skankmofo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      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 .5% of those people are not homogenous that is still a shitload of people.

      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
    6. Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer by mc6809e · · Score: 4, Funny

      Rock on! Kind of makes you proud to be a Westerner, doesn't it?

      What's really bizzare about all of this?

      1. Bush says "they hate us for our freedoms" but he doesn't believe it.
      2. It's actually true, so he is accidentally right about something.
      3. The Osamas of the world think America is morally too socially liberal.
      4. so do conservatives in the US.
      5. The US conservatives are fighting people they can somewhat agree with to protect the freedom of people they disagree with.
      6. The political right doesn't realize it.
      7. The political left doesn't realize it.

  2. As long as this continues to be the trend... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... We are foolish not to use all our sway to move to Open Source solutions in our companies and to develop Open Source Software.

    OSS is no longer an ideology, it is fiscal self defense for programmers and IT professionals in general. Open Source allows us to start our own businesses offering support and design services without the middle man of large software companies that will always seek to downsize us to cheaper people.

    I'm sure others may disagree, but this is the way I see things.

  3. Workaround for US export controls? by arc.light · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Workaround for US export controls? by cL0h · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even more relevant is the fact that China have strict controls on imported computer software but are much more lenient on software produced within the country since the company involved can be more closely regulated.
      This is the reason why my company has forty development positions available at the moment in China and an apparent hiring freeze in Europe and North America.

      --
      cL0h
  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Re:This isn't just programming, it's R&D by asterix_2k1 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    No there is a big difference here. The article says that Oracle now considers China's domestic market to be profitable enough to invest. I am sure that the R&D centre in China will be more or less focussed on making China-specific products.

    As an analogy, IBM's research lab in India is focussed on making eGovernance solutions, machine translation solns from/to Indian languages, Hindi speech reco etc.

    Also, it goes without saying that it adds to the overall prestige of Oracle as well.

  6. Who wants a small-town America? by Morgaine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jeez folks, get out of this recent small-town myopia about outsourcing. You can do better than that. Dell's a good example of how excellent US industry can be if you shrug off yesterday's models and try to be genuinely different and quality-focussed, instead of regressive and protectionist.

    If you complain about outsourcing you're merely buying into politician's agendas, effectively giving them an easy platform of "Vote for me and I will protect your jobs". Make great stuff and you don't need protectionism. And if you really value a free market, restrictions should be the last thing on your minds anyway.

    The world is a tiny place now, you shouldn't be thinking about "keeping jobs at home" any more than you'd think about extracting all your raw materials from home too. That's not today's world. You can't compete on the basis of labour cost, that should be obvious; you need to be better.

    Globalization of both the markets and the production has been immense in recent decades, and no megacorp can afford to chain itself down with yesterday's small-town views nor barriers against free flow of resources.

    --
    "The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
  7. Oracle is a global company. by houseofmore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oracle outfits companies around the globe. They advertise themselves as a global company. If they open local office, it's hardly outsourcing.

    If my company in New Zealand, or Canada, or wherever, made a billion dollars in the states, and decided it was time to open up a US office,would be out sourcing? Don't be so fucking greedy.

  8. Alanguagewithoutspaces by Underholdning · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. outsourcing by coaxial · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People fear outsourcing, but the powers that be say "Nah! Don't worry about that. See the Chinese and the Indians will only do what they're good at which is mindless repetitive labor, and we Americans will what we're good at which is innovating!" That argument hasn't been working, and it's obvious why. It's a simplisitc attempt to appeal jingoism and racism. Implicit in that argument is "They're too stupid to do thinking jobs, not like us." That's bullshit, and this move by Oracle proves it.

    The other myth about "free trade" is that it's all or nothing. You have to let companies import and outsource everything, otherwise you're economy will tank. That has never been the case, and it never will be.