Slashdot Mirror
Network Management Outsourced to India
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The latest wrinkle for outsourcing companies in India is long-distance monitoring of corporate computer networks in U.S. and Europe -- services that could be worth tens of billions of dollars, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Growth is expected as factories become more computerized and remote services expand to include controlling plant temperatures from afar and even monitoring who enters and exits the premises. 'Theoretically,' says Azim Premji, chairman and founder of India outsourcing company Wipro Ltd., 'anything on a network can be managed remotely from India.'"
Great idea until you have one of them patch a server and it doesn't come backup. If you can't get feet on the ground within an hour then you are useless.
...Until hardware starts to fail.
Look at the picture in the article. I've seen happier faces behind the counter at McDonalds. You can have those jobs India.
http://religiousfreaks.com/>
>'Growth is expected as factories become more computerized and remote services expand to include controlling plant temperatures from afar and even monitoring who enters and exits the premises. Theoretically,' says Azim Premji, chairman and founder of India outsourcing company Wipro Ltd., 'anything on a network can be managed remotely from India.'"
"Practically", say several million skript kiddies, crackers, and Slashdotters, "anything on a network that can be managed remotely from India, won't remain on a network for very much longer. And it's spelled 'Hilarity', not 'Growth'".
"Theoretically," says Azim Premji, chairman and founder of India outsourcing company Wipro Ltd., "anything on a network can be managed remotely from India."
Oh really? I learned a LOT of theory based ideas in school, but once I entered the working world, the REAL world, things were vastly different.
Become a plumber, house painter, doctor, whatever. It's probably going to be a long while before teleporting works well enough to take house repair and similar work overseas.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Who in their right mind would do this other than a bean counter ???? I work in this shit every day and am sick and tired of dealing with offshore data-admin-development centers. I call and speak with "Bob" and tell him i need a restore of a local GMP server .... and yet as always its a big friggin hassle...and never gets done properly .... ack.... i need to grow crops or paint houses for a living....this ain't working..... but it never ceases to amaze me the idiots that think this is a "good" idea and beneficial for the company.......
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
I was talking with a middle manager for a European cell phone company the other month. She was telling me that production was in China, most of support was in China, and they were moving R&D to China as well because by that point the Chinese engineer knew where that particular technology was going. So I said, "Basically you're a subsidiary of a Chinese company then". She told me that it was the other way around, and we argued about it for a while. What I found interesting is that the company had basically no product-line positions left, all they were hiring was sales and marketing.
You can hardly get good managed services when the dude is beside the boxes, good luck with that remote hooha. Also, as others have pointed out if the network is truly down down down, they're powerless.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
China Threatens Inda Eminence
Achille Talon
Hop!
1)WHy the fuck do you have a manager for 3 people? IF thats common, your company is fucked.
2)If they didn't do anything, you had too large a staff for your size of an organization.
and of course
3)Good luck when servers break.
4)Good luck protecting your company secrets. EMployees have some risk, but foreign companies that may have many more people and minimal oversite (and completely different laws) are a huge risk.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Some positions can be done affectively remotely but when it comes to networking you really want people to stay put especially in terms of security. Unless a PTP link between here and India has gone down dramatically in price. Got to love adding attack vectors to a network to save money.
I work for a very large international company that does network monitoring for large enterprise clients. We monitor from Toronto, Boulder, Rochester and Bangalore. The support we get from the group in India is no worse that the support that is delivered from North America.
As long as we're not using Tivoli, everything is fine.
Theoretically, anything on a network that can be managed remotely from India can also be managed by an expert system running on a CPU on that network... without the added expense of long distance communication and employees, and without the added failure modes of having your international links go down. Plus, the programming for the expert system should be around the same magnitude of difficulty as writing the scripts for the Indians to follow, and anything either one of them doesn't recognize is going to get escalated to a higher-up anyway. So why is outsourcing network management to a person in another country a big win over outsourcing to a machine? Neither one of them is capable of pushing the damn reset button!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Unfortunately, companies haven't figured out that CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and CTOs can be outsource too. Most of these fuckers are worthless anyway. Given that the typical CEO in the U.S. makes over 400 times the salary of the average worker in his company, think of the savings! Get some guy in India to do it for like 30k a year.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Have you ever noticed that you get a WORSE level of service over the phone (or otherwise remotely) than in person? Sure you have! Here is the reason: There exists LESS accountability. /. posters have pointed out), HARDWARE fails too.
For exmaple, when I have the ability to drive down the street and GET IN TO SOMEONES FACE if I am not satisfied with a product or service, you know what? I tend to get better service!
Thats what network management is, a service.
Any manager with half a brain would not do this. They would realize that (as other
Lesson; you need good local people!! Always have, always will.
Please have the tireless generosity to note that all my future meta-moderation and precocious-buttock repartee will henceforth be conveyed to your worthy consideration by "Smitty" and "Pete" in Bangalore.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
All your corporate secrets can be sold on the internet to the highest bidder.
Of course, some businesses don't need security, and don't give a stuff about the security of their employees records. So they needn't worry about their corporate data being accessible to anyone with a packet sniffer and some open source decryption software. And anyway, the American government has probably already collected and leaked their secrets, and the UK government is probably passing a law at this very moment requiring all secrets everywhere to be held on a database in Novosibirsk (sp?) on a computer owned by hackers.ru (but with Tony Blair having your GPG key for safety).
Thinks... Maybe I should not mix the coffee with brandy)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
This is a good idea for some companies, and a bad idea for some companies. Don't be so quick to assume that every company that implements such a program is instantly going to have all their systems go down in flames. Some companies will have good experiences, and some may have bad experiences. We're seeing comments in both directions in this very discussion thread.
I'm sure that companies that outsource their network administration have an emergency lifeline in case of severe problems. It would probably be most cost-effective to have your main network administration in India, but have a local company (which contracts its services to multiple companies) only for problems that require a physical presence.
However, if your company's system experiences truly earth-shattering complications on a regular basis, maybe you ought to be outsourcing your network administration to Indian professionals who offer a tenfold talent-per-dollar increase over your existing resources. If nothing else, it's a better value for the 300 days out of the year when all the servers need is some remote babysitting.
This is freaking IN-SANE! These people are not all our friends and assumes we will always be allies. Imagine the opening shot in a future conflict being data networks and phones at thousands of businesses shutting down at once. All your web searches being re-routed because the corporate fucktards at Bellsouth decided to save a few pennies letting Indian support centers handle large chunks of their network maintenance.
I'm not saying Indian admins are reckless or incompetent. I'm saying that it's a bad idea to turn over too much control of our information resources over to a foreign country, just like it's a bad idea to depend on a fragile line of oil tankers connecting us to a bunch of wild-eyed goat herders for our transportation fuel and trusting the Chinese and Koreans with all our manufacturing capability. If push comes to shove they'll do what their government tells them to do. This is all going to come around to bite us in the ass one of these days.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
But it's much tougher--if not downright impossible--to remotely improve that network.
Organizations who are interested in outsourcing are also generally interested in growing their business; and when they grow, so does their infrastructure, including their networks, both in size and complexity. Expanding a network involves a tremendous number of physical resources and processes, including obtaining and installing cable, routers, servers, software, etc. Trust me, you want to have a knowledgeable network staff *on-site* to coordinate such a movement. I suppose that someone across the ocean could simply call up contractors to install all of this stuff, but the cost in time and efficiency, especially during the troubleshooting phase, would be enormous.
If your company wishes to maintain a stagnant network--one that can't adapt to the growth of their company; then by all means, outsource all your network management. Just hope your hardware never breaks.
It's been about 5 years so my experience isn't current, but unless they've suddenly become highly trained, clueful, and motivated, I can't see this being any more successful than the other failed outsourcing to India attempts. The software developers over there working on our projects ignored requirements, standards, and schedules. They were hard to communicate with (culturally _and_ linguistically), and timing was of course always delayed because they're not working when you need to talk to them.
So, of course, they're cheaper, and people will go with them. Eventually they'll either fail, or get smart, and need someone local. By then they'll hire whoever India is outsourcing _their_ stuff to. There's whole continents we haven't started to do this with, yet.
Question: What do you do when the network goes down?
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Hey, I bet there are some pretty smart MBAs over in India who could do the job of most managers and CEOs twice as well for a quarter of the pay. As an added benefit, with remote management, worker morale would improve.
I hope shareholders sue the boards of any companies that don't outsource their management, they are costing those shareholders money.
Laugh-a while you can, monkey-boys, your turn is coming.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I like to put my vital infrastructure in the place most likely to be involved in a nuclear war this decade.
Got a toll free number ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I wouldn't panic to much. Globalisation is allmost once around the globe by now. It only takes so long for countries to arrive at a simular level as others. Especially when both are racing for the true bottom line. The ones from the top and the others from the bottom. Ten years ago Taiwan was the lowest bidder in the bicyce business. Now their luxury and the bikes are built in vietnam. Not before long Gary Fisher will have a team welding somewhere in the US again.
Do what's fun. Do it good. Tell people about it. The rest just happens. Meanwhile you can offer writing procedures for network admining for outsourced admin services. At a more specialized rate that is.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Companies haven't "figured it out" yet because the CEO picked the VP of HR who's negotiating his pay package, oh and the CEO's probably also the chairman of the board, too. He's probably on the board of three other companies with half of those guys, and they all play golf together and light each others' cigars with $100 bills.
Anyone with the power to "figure it out" and do something about it has absolutley zero incentive to do so. Nice, huh?
This is the point where you should be asking yourself "how do I become a CEO?"
HR and accounting? I mean seriously, what is so "special" about IT that makes it the most frequently outsourced field. There is no technical reason that the bean counters and HR monkeys could not be outsourced just as easily.
This is an intelligence test people. If you do not get the next step that is the obvious solution to managers who came up with the idea of outsourcing then congrats. You are an idiot.
The solution to the problems that arise when you outsource the management of your non-outsourced systems? Outsource the systems.
TADA!
Why not? They are outsourcing everything else aren't they?
And don't think outsourcing is anything new either. How many of you work in companies that have their own cantina's. Used to be a member of the company meaning they had heart for the business and were for instance willing to work overtime along with the other workers.
Been outsourced to special companies meaning nowadays it is all the same generic crap with zero attention to the specific needs of the company. Like for instance making the cooking equipment available to people having to work the nightshift.
Offcourse now everyone is crying because it is their job that is going away. If you didn't protest when the thee lady was outsourced then don't expect anyone to protest because your job is going away.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The middle and upper levels of management will follow because frankly, distance does matter, despite what Wipro think. Eventually they will be wholly Chinese companies owned by foreign shareholders. I don't really have a problem with this, it pushes the chinese economy up, makes them more expensive.
It'll level out, the important thing is to allow the currencies to float freely, which isn't happening at the moment. That's what you should be complaining about to your MP/representative.
Deleted
When we see a headline titled "Management outsourced to India" then we will finally see some kind of pressure put to stop this.
But seriously, why wouldn't a 30k per year, indian masters in business administration manager be able to manage just as effectively as a 4 million dollar per year manager (and hey- he'd have better contacts with the new movers and shakers).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I feel sorry for the remaining guy.
My guess is, the remaining guy is the manager, who is making 500k - ($8,500 * 12)
More likely, it was three people working for 50k, and a manager raking in 350k to twiddle his thumbs and drink coffee. Welcome to America, where the people are bottomheavy and the businesses are topheavy!
Why exactly is a bad idea? Let me ask you a different question - why should government be outsourced to DC, Washington? Why should police enforcement be outsourced to the HQ two cities over? Why should the military be outsourced to Fort Bragg? Why should training of the federal police be outsourced to Quantico, Virginia?
Face it, outsourcing is already a way of life. The only difference between now and earlier is that the people to whom things get outsourced don't look like you, don't speak your language and keep different hours. And I'd argue that even that can also be said when you talk about outsourcing support centers from California to South Carolina.
The main problem with outsourcing right now has nothing to do with "ohhhh... scary foreigners get to do what we used to do!" It has everything to do with outsourcing being applied in the wrong places, unrealistic expectations of its benefits and there being little oversight and control exerted over the outsourced operations.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"The reason you pay $9 for an asprin at a US hospital is because once every few years, the asprin fails to fix someone's headache. Then the person sues for $20 million."
That's only part of the problem. You can play wack-a-mole trying to find all the symptoms. Or you can get to the core problem. Our "save me at all costs" mentality. A lot of our problems stem from that attitude.
Could be... but in that case they could (and should) have just let the manager go, and cut costs to nearly where they are now, AND had 3 people onsite... far far better than what they accomplished with outsourcing.
Interesting how the same folks who complain about losing jobs to Inda/China/wherever are wearing Nikes made in Philipines and listening to an iPod made in China and are probably running a Finnish OS on a computer mainly made in Taiwan or Korea. There's nothing special about geek jobs. They're the same as any other jobs. If they can be shipped overseas and done cheaper --- well that's what is going to happen. The only way to avoid this is to keep ahead of the pack or to get a job that can't be relocated (for now anyway). Crying about it does not help.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As an Indian, trying to work out some remote management stuff, I'd say you're mostly right on the IPSec part - which is why we're using OpenVPN site-to-site tunnels. Much easier to setup and ensure security.
/., we know what technologies are available, and we're not afraid of using those technologies.
And even though we're in India, we've heard of ssh, and OpenSSH. We've even heard of OpenBSD, cue *shock*, *horror*.
Managing things over the VPN --> no DMZ accessible login services (other than ssh, openVPN).
RRD and SNMP would be stored locally on-site. The only time it would get to us would be when we actually need to check something. So no, the bandwidth usage is not going to be that high.
And we don't send passwords via plain-text email, we either call the passwords in through the phone or since we're in through the VPN anyway, setup local secure communication and use that.
Seriously, we're not idiots, we read
Next step is Xen and virtualisation for some of what we do. Oh, I'm in an Indian startup, and we're trying to mainly target the Indian market. Any spill-over into the American/European market will be additional revenue. Also, given the cost structures we are targetting here, there will be no company in the US which can compete with us - on cost. And whatever is done technologically, it will take us but 6 months to catch up. Assuming of course we haven't done it already.
Have fun!
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
The main problem with outsourcing right now has nothing to do with "ohhhh... scary foreigners get to do what we used to do!"
Wrongo. It is trying to compete with people who's cost of living is 1/6th ours. The cost to fill up a given neuron with info is simply far cheaper there. Brains are becomming a cheap commodity instead of something prized. If this is not an earth-shattering paradigm change in terms of careers and education, I don't know what is.
Table-ized A.I.
I really think you're overplaying the racism angle here. There is a genuine concern over losing jobs that has nothing at all to do with racism.
In fact, I'm really tired of seeing the race card played in outsourcing discussions. There's nothing racist about wanting an economy that's based on actually producing things.
After many decades of English subjug^H^H^H^H partnership with India, Indians are far to expensive and skilled for operations work. It's much better to use such an well known and educated work force for research and development. What a crime it would be to make PhDs push buttons and monitor mind numbing panels for a living. It would be better for them to stay home like their US counterparts, and they will have to if they keep get much more expensive.
For operations work, we need the educated and inexpensive discipline that can be found in all the former Soviet territories. The people who built and named the Kurks obviously have the discipline and razor sharp focus demanded for the job. Moreover there's great economic need for such a thing. I hear there are still many people displaced and unemployed by the Chernobyl dissaster. Remote operations of Nuclear power plants is just the break they need. Due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, they are cheaper than the happily employed people who live next to you. Just think of the savings and how much more money people like Neutron Jack deserve. Their compensation is hardly enough for all the hard exercise they get. Expect the paper value of such forward looking companies as GE, NBC and Microsoft to skyrocket.
Ten years ago, I read a joke but some people must have taken it litterally. The joke was, a clever executive noticed the value of their company increased 10% every time they fired five percent of their workforce. The bold executive soon got into a boasting contest with others. Everyone was fired and the Dow hit 10,000. Oh yeah, well just own all the ideas other people come up with and implement that will work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
PHB: We need to use Microsoft Windows on our networks.
....
NetAdmin: Windows sucks. It crashes all the time. I have to be in the server room 24/7...
PHB: You can reboot the machine from elsewhere.
NA: I can do that if it was linux using telnet. The Windows GUI sucks
PHB: Ok, go use linux
NA: Done. Now I have linux. It never crashes! I can manage everything from my desk!! I can manage everything from my home!!!
PHB: Excellent. Now we'll let Wipro manage everything from India!!!!
"I'd rather have our system than the free-for-all (aka ****-em-all) system of the USA, where you have to pay up or die on the sidewalk."
Then, immediately, you say:
"Now if only we could be a little more selective about WHO we treat for free; kick those welfare ***-kissers out!"
I apologize if I missed some sarcasm, but your statements don't seem to make any sense.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
When people lose their jobs, one of the first things they cut is going out to eat, then it's new toy buying, then they start to default on old debt, using the cheaper credit cards, then they start to dodge the mortgage or rent and utilities, then it's living on the street. I've seen it happen to folks, roughly around the 6 to 9 months un or underemployed level most folks are completely hosed.
Eventually the US will lose so many wealth creation type jobs that the remaining "service" type jobs will become obsolete because they fall into the "want" category rather than the "necessity" category. then we are all screwed, and it will be too late to get revenge on the conmen CEO and wall street hucksters heads on sticks because all of them will have fled the country to other places.
Most people are living in denial of this, but really, trading millions of jobs a year so a few very wealthy people can get even more wealthy was never a real smart idea, they just have control of the stock shilling media and access to bribe government because they have the largest sacks of cash to use. It's pathetic, and you can still see people defending the practice, despite every serious economic indicator showing that we have screwed up mightily.
The government keeps reclassifying jobs to make the employment stats look good (the parent burger flipping is now considered a "manufacturing" job). They stopped reporting most of the basic M3 money supply stats (because they have started printing cash by the truckload). They yanked critical normal living costs like food and energy from the consumer price index reports. They lowball and downplay all debt and consider the highest debt levels historically to somehow be "good". We have a LOWER average personal savings rate than during the Great Depression.
Man, there's a big list you can go down. Dollar dropping in global worth against most other major currencies. Stocks trading still at completely absurd fantasyland P and E ratios. Humongous wage disparity between grunts and higher level management, I mean off the scale with the past 200 years of averages. The percentage of actual productive workers in the economy as opposed to busywork "workers". HUGE bloated government bureaucracies, typically any agency will absorb around 2/3rds of every dollar spent on it with taxes just to *manage itself*, the public-service task the agency has to do comes way behind.
On and on.
It's GONE. The second Great Depression has already started by any rational indicator or analysis, what is left is media spin, expanded credit, and an increasingly hysterical and irrational government that is now going around the world labeling anything they don't like as a terrorist threat, and passing laws as fast as they can to make every internal citizen "guilty" of something or another so they can have total firm control.
These guys at the top aren't that stupid, they know it's here and will get worse, these guys are looters and they know full well what the looting will be doing to the US, so this is damage control for the future so they can stay in power and in command and control. They can live with the US as a second world nation, they don't care, these high level folks travel to various developing nations and lack for nothing while there, they dig it, they love that extreme power they have over people when there is such a wealth disparity. They will still have mansions and planes and armies of mercenaries to protect them (cops or soldiers, no difference anymore so we should just stop with the pretending, and the looted money will partially go to pay for their personal bodyguards masquerading as "the good guys for law-n-order and democracy! drivel").
Their dream model is a global state with two classes of humans, a 1% master and 99% wage/serf/slave split, kept in place by a quite vigorus and draconian police state apparatus. We will still have technology of course, the masters want it and will order that it continues, but for the