Network Outsourcing
In my last post I have dealt with the fact how the citizens of the developed nations feel that
outsourcing is all about corporate greed and how India has metamorphosed from being an underdog in the global business arena to being the invincible in the
IT outsourcing sector by compelling the so-called market leaders to have a taste of defeat in the grueling business competition.
My views may have seemed somewhat vehement or biased but what I wrote was as per the fact and figures. And as I concluded with the words that
IT services outsourcing shall prevail in the near future, there was left enough scope to discuss about how this shall happen. Isn’t it?
So, taking the subject further, this time I would like to throw some light upon how in the outsourcing sector itself India is gradually conquering laurels and thereby setting higher standards for itself, each time and how India is striving to establish the fact that cost efficiency and quality are not mutually exclusive. The latest feather that India has added to its cap is better known as network outsourcing.
The rapidly falling cost of communications hardware has triggered the upgradation of networks of organizations on a large scale just to take the advantage of better performance and new features. However, on the flip side, there has been a steep rise in the cost of management of these new, complex networks, thereby bothering again the outsourcing sector for a cost-effective solution.
Outsourcing network services to India is still in a nascent stage. Nevertheless, the Indian soil has already witnessed the existence of some quality players in this segment also who are ready to face and overpower the formidable opponents in the likes of IBM, NCR, Compaq, and HP. Moreover, the already established Indian giants in the outsourcing sector have also sowed the seeds for network services by running network operations centers for global clients.
Analogous to all other services outsourced to India, outsourcing network services have also been subjected to controversies and resistance from the developed nations. However, even with security related apprehensions looming large over the fate of outsourced networked services, key players like Wipro, Infosys, and Bangalore labs are paving the way for others to follow by building their skills in this area and offering great value to companies wishing to outsource their network management services.
With the network infrastructure services market growing at a steady rate of 26% annually there is enough reason for the SMBs also to venture into this sea of lucrative prospects. However, there is still a long way to go before the Indian companies make a dent in the global market and for that, the Indian companies need to address some major concerns, which might provide hindrance to their quest for excellence in the network services domain. The concerns include:
· Security: In order to counter this concern, the veteran players are placing in stringent security rules to guarantee confidentiality and safeguard against any theft of information.
· Quality: The Indian companies are effectively dealing with this concern by following quality practices designed for catering to global clients.
· Changing mindsets: This concern pertains to the fear among some companies who are not comfortable outsourcing network security management offshore. The Indian companies are dealing with this concern by alleviating their fear by combining onsite and offshore management before moving completely offshore.
The way these Indian companies have researched to find the right formula for providing network services overseas and the way these companies are consistently refining their own formula, none can blindfold oneself to overlook the enormous amount of potential in outsourcing network management services to India. It is just a matter of time before India again shines with another new jewel on its crown.
Outsourcing- Leading India to the Pinnacle
Outsourcing, the word itself spells an utter rift between the superpowers and the developing nations. The past few years have seen a lot of hue and cry over the outsourcing issue. People in the developed countries have even made this a political strategy to topple the opposition. They have been talking about job losses, ethics, morality, labor laws, information insecurity and god knows what else.
To me, this severe backlash against this out-of-the box business strategy, outsourcing, seems strange. If you dig deep into the roots of outsourcing, you will observe that outsourcing is certainly not an unprecedented phenomenon to this world.
The basic principle behind outsourcing is nothing but getting the monotonous, tedious manual tasks done by cheap labors. Now, didn’t this phenomenon start in Hitler’s regime itself? May be, I am being just too eccentric, but the fact of the matter is that, its worth giving a thought.
Nobody, except the labors themselves, complained when they were being forced to clean the chimneys in Hitler’s dictatorship. Neither did anybody complain when the manufacturing jobs were being outsourced to China. Then why are they whining so dreadfully when the white-collar jobs are being outsourced to countries like India?
Its because of nothing but the fear of stiff competition, and its purely a human nature to complain about the adversities and the competitors whenever we fail to live up to the expectations or beat the competition. And this is the bitter truth because of which the people on the brighter side of the world desperately oppose the overall concept of
IT outsourcing.
The fear of being left behind in the competition has made these people so apprehensive that they have put India under a constant surveillance. One wrong move, and they are going to initiate the assault instantly.
Just take the recent example wherein the Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV claimed an illegal sale of personal information of thousands of Australian customers by Indian BPO workers, thereby trying to highlight the security risks of outsourcing. Doesn’t this incident seem like a pre-planned, biased attack toward outsourcing?
Yes, it is true that security of information is a major concern, but it certainly does not mean that banning outsourcing altogether will ensure complete security of information. The security breaches simply demand that stringent measures are needed to address the problem of people and not corporate or national boundaries. And India has already started responding to the alarm.
The Indian
offshore outsourcing companies have started training their staff on cyber ethics with an emphasis on cyber law education. In addition, the Indian IT Act of information security and cyber crime is also being updated with fresh amendments from NASSCOM. And these measures have already begun showing results.
The case wherein the Indian police arrested former employees of an Indian call center for allegedly stealing consumers’ funds bears a testimony to the fact. Although such an incident is unfortunate in itself, the fact that it was handled successfully highlights and reaffirms the existence of an effective framework of laws and a commitment to enforcing them in India.
All the backlash and daemons of outsourcing notwithstanding, the fact of the matter is, no IT savvy or a visionary in any area of specialization in the world can ill-afford to overlook the virtues of outsourcing. The driving phenomenon of outsourcing has had numerous derivatives during its realization and evolution including the rift from capital-intensive processes to knowledge and skill exhaustive processes. Consequently, such developments shift the focus from the current fury of outsourcing to the figures and facts, which point to only one direction – India.
But irrespective of whatever is being said or done, the bottom line is that, outsourcing shall prevail as long as this world is being governed by Charles Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest”. And this gives India the opportunity to take the world head on and rise to the pinnacle.
