Mexican Hotel Chain Outsources IT To US

cweditor writes "Grupo Posadas has five data centers supporting more than 100 hotels and other lines of business, but it's moving almost all of those operations to a service provider in Texas. Could cloud service providers help the U.S. become a destination for tech outsourcing instead of an exporter of tech jobs? One stumbling block: The U.S. finds itself on the receiving end of protectionist legislation in other countries that discourages use of non-domestic IT service providers, says the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."

Comments

Host in USA - get free backup

[Keruo]

Todays offer, host in USA, get free backup from NSA.
Only problem is getting back the copies once the cloud service crashes/vanishes underneath.

Blatant lie

[aepervius]

"The US finds itself on the receiving end of protectionist legislation in other countries that discourages use of non-domestic IT service providers"

That is a misrepresentation. most country I know of which view the US cloud service warrily, do because of the privacy protection of their citizen. One cannot guarantee any privacy protection once the data is on US soil. Neitehr can one guanrantee that the US will not subponea the data. THAT is the reason some country do not want their cloud data in the US, or outside their own juridiction for what it matters.

Re:Blatant lie

[Tailhook]

Even if one accepts the claim that the US is a privacy liability, that claim is orthogonal to whether other nations impede US services with protectionism — those two possibilities may coexist just fine. Despite this obvious fallacy the parent characterizes the latter as a `blatant lie' while citing nothing credible.

Please try not mod this nonsense up. I know we're supposed to indulge privacy outrage around here but the parent is crap. Find some other, less stupid malcontent to amplify.

Re:Blatant lie

[Tridus]

Actually, it's not. The US government screams "protectionism" when other countries pass things like privacy laws that don't allow you to store private data outside the country precisely because of the US government's fondness for spying on everything. If you have to keep data private legally, it's a pretty bad start when a cloud provider shows up and can't explain why they won't have to hand a Canadian business' data on Canadian customers over to a US spy agency on totally arbitrary conditions.

Sometimes the two aren't related, but sometimes they are.

Re:Blatant lie

[Concern]

Hmm. I'm usually the first one to point out mistaken beliefs about US superiority in general, or certainly in terms of privacy protection or civil rights.

I can't speak for Mexico. However, I don't believe i.e. India offers any privacy protection that the US does not. In fact, in most outsourcing hotspots around South or Central America or the Pac Rim, you not only have even fewer stated protections, but you are dealing with governments that are even less, shall we say, predictable. You also have to be concerned about how safe and easy it is to do business (with i.e. an outsourcing firm, hosting company) in places where the quality of the civil courts is not so great. And, let's be real - in many nations where IT outsourcing once boomed, the court system is more a theater for bribery than a forum for the practice of law. And then there's the well-documented danger of collusion between the state and large domestic companies, or even organized crime, to a degree that even the US still blushes at (and the US does not blush at much, especially these days)...

I did once investigate whether it was possible for an American to go to India in reverse of what normally happens in IT - to study there, or take an IT job there, either for several years or perhaps to emigrate. I came away with the impression that it would be harder as an American citizen to go there, than as an Indian citizen, to come here.

I think our trade and immigration policies are often ridiculous, but especially so when, in our era of "free movement of goods," the US doesn't even extract bilateral agreements on the free movement of people, after speaking with the relevant lobbyists to determine what the visa quotas should be. :)

Re:Blatant lie

[nedlohs]

Of course not, they're just one such country who also happens to be a country with a pretty large IT industry so that it might actually be an issue.

Yes, Iran invades people's privacy as well - but Iran isn't high on the list of places to buy "cloud storage" from.

China does to, but while China is a popular IT outsourcing destination I haven't seen a lot of "cloud storage" stuff from their (or India) - network connectivity is significantly worse than the US after all.

The underlying issue is non-domestic storage. It doesn't matter what country it is in, you have reduced the protection of your data. Now both your local government and a foreign government can request your data (and the foreign one can also physically take the hard drives). Maybe if your local government is in the business of taking physical servers by force but not doing anything about someone refusing to supply requested data you gain something - but that seems an unlikely combination.

Not much shift in Jobs...

[icebike]

Look, its fairly easy to get into the "cloud" business as the only barriers are financial, not technical.
Other than power, It costs about the same to run a data center with 200 cores as it costs to run one with 500 cores.
You might hire one more tech support person. Maybe. Probably not.

There will be few jobs outsourced to Texas, other than janitorial ones, because the hosting company
is only going to be running the machines, the Mexican hotel chain will still be managing them and
running their own booking software.

They are shedding physical plant, not jobs.

What they surrender is control. If the data center is accused of hosting some IP pirate nodes, the Mexican hotel
chain could find their servers are grabbed by the FBI in some heavy handed Anti-Pirate operation.

Top 5 Reasons Not to Outsource to US

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Top 5 reasons not to outsource to US:

5. Can't trust those Americans with your data.
4. You'll lose control over your infrastructure.
3. Low prices are temporary and will increase as the global economy continues to balance
2. Perceived cost savings are more than offset by the additional cost of having to spec everything out to the point where you're better off doing it yourself.
1. You won't be able to understand them when you call for support.

Re:Top 5 Reasons Not to Outsource to US

[Anonymous Coward]

Top 5 reasons not to outsource to US:

5. Can't trust those Americans with your data.
4. You'll lose control over your infrastructure.
3. Low prices are temporary and will increase as the global economy continues to balance
2. Perceived cost savings are more than offset by the additional cost of having to spec everything out to the point where you're better off doing it yourself.
1. You won't be able to understand them when you call for support.

5. Gringos ladrones.
4. Gringos ladrones.
3. Gringos ladrones.
2. Gringos ladrones.
1. Gringos no hablan español.

Re:Top 5 Reasons Not to Outsource to US

[roc97007]

That strikes me as the top 5 reasons not to outsource anywhere.

Dilbert

[KDN]

Years ago Dilbert had a strip where they outsourced to country A, who outsourced to company B, and so forth until it was eventually outsourced back to themselves. Its finally happened :-)

Calling support...

[drkim]

Of course this get better when they call the support number and hear:

"Hello... I.T. support center. This is Joe-Bob, uh, I mean, uh, Pedro. How can I help ya'all?"

Re:Calling support...

[roc97007]

It's not the country. A "peggy" is a "peggy" if it's in Poland, India, Mexico or Ackerly.

I think you missed the joke...

I'm living the joke. Yes, I'm well aware that the current trend is for foreigns to use names appropriate for the country they're supporting. Some don't, and conversations go more like:

"Hello this is Anantharaman, how may I be helping you today?"

"Well, Aratha..."

"Anantharaman."

"Umm, Anaratharam..."

"Anantharaman"

"I'm just gonna call you 'Fred', ok?"

The hardest part of a service call should not be communicating with the helpdesk.

Re:Same staff

[techno-vampire]

The US was always inhabited by people of different cultures who have spoken different languages.

One of the greatest parts of America has always been the concept of The Melting Pot. Now liberals are trying to do away with it in the name of Cultural Diversity with the unintended consequence of the loss of the hybrid vigor it produced.