Even after Gartner listed Mexico as one of the top 30 offshore locations, the country has been struggling to enter the spotlight of today’s global outsourcing arena. While concerns over border violence and drug-related crime have already overshadowed the benefits of Mexico’s proximity to US, swine flu is now the latest blow for the Mexican [...]

Amid the current economic downturn, it can be tempting for service providers to accept any opportunity that comes their way, even if it involves stretching beyond their core competencies. Big mistake. While we still endorse diversification as ‘the mantra’ to capitalize on market inefficiencies, the company’s positioning and service capabilities carry much more weight. Though [...]

At a time when traditional technology service providers are struggling to co-exist with the competitive SaaS and cloud computing market, innovation still remains the nucleus of any success story. Though the timing may seem inappropriate, given the harsh economic realities all over the world, we believe maintaining status quo would be the biggest folly technology [...]

Papers are avidly describing how IBM is handily winning deals with Indian corporations like Reliance, Bharti and others, where the Indian WITCH group (sorry Satyam!) is losing out. What is it with these corporate netas? They don’t trust home-grown talent? Need the white guys in their cupboards? Fie!

A recent study by a leading marketing services firm has revealed that firms that cut manufacturing and administrative functions during recession earn more profits than those that brought down their expenditure on marketing. But with the current economic scenario stretching the IT marketing budgets thin, how can firms contain the costs of acquiring and retaining [...]

The last decade has been kind to bodyshoppers who escaped under the USCIS scanner, brought in talent (that in itself is questionable) on a dubious visa justification, and made a pile by shopping these folks around. From the experiences of many consultants I have met, this decade was quite like before Lincoln abolished the dark [...]

In these troubled times, the grass, as always, seems to be greener on the other side. As troubled American firms are scaling back, an increasing number of IT outsourcing companies both in India and abroad are realizing that the center of gravity need not always be the US. Today, the force is where opportunities abound. [...]

The Satyam fiasco has emerged at a time when India is struggling to sustain its glory as the IT outsourcing industry darling. As mentioned in a previous post ‘Is India’s position jeopardized in the outsourcing game?’: Such countries as China, Vietnam, Philippines, Russia, Poland and other in Eastern Europe can give India a run for [...]

IT services outsourcing, an area that took off during the 2001 economic slowdown as an easy way to reduce costs, has an unpredictable fate in today’s economic slump. An Information Week article reports the findings of a new Foresster report: A stronger U.S. dollar will weigh the industry down in 2009. Yes you got it [...]

Wow…in a short 30 days, an ironic twist occurs. A company named Satyam, meaning “truth” screws its investors, messes up customer integrity, and finally leaves 53000-odd trusting employees adrift. Drop the S, now the Indian IT world becomes a WITCH-hunt. Wow Karthik