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India's Prime Minister Acts To Strengthen Cyber-Security
Looks like India's prime minister is doing a little damage control, continuing to push for tighter information security laws. Seems like a good time to do it, especially after all the bad press India has been getting lately in IT.
I'm continuing to be amazed at how much is decided by marketing and publicity. I'm sure the Indian prime minister is working an issue that is important internally, but over here people are deciding to outsource or not to India based, in part, on the news coverage it is getting.
It is an incredible new world we've come into over the past 50 years. Fighting a war with America? Don't worry about strategic targets. Blow people up to get headlines. Your real goal is to persuade Joe Six Pack watching the nightly news, not some military victory.
Likewise, I can see the outsourcing battle becoming more fully engaged in the next few years. Consumers are already complaining about call centers in other countries, and its common knowledge that most people hate their cell phone companies due to poor service. Winners in this arena are going to have to do more than cut costs: they're going to have to win the war of public opinion at the same time.
I was convinced by Tom Friedman of the New York Times that outsourcing to India or wherever is a good idea. It brings other countries into the global economic system and increases their standard of living. This is an important step toward providing job opportunities, a greater sense of fairness and hope for the future to people who have lived in poor conditions under incompetent leadership for too long. It also makes sense that outsourcing can offer a better career path to some who might otherwise be recruited by terrorist groups.
But now that I've worked directly with various outsourcing companies, I must say that they won't last long if they don't provide better quality. The old saying "you get what you pay for" comes to mind. None of the development projects that my company has outsourced have worked out--even for simple things like fixing bugs. Some of our customers use outsourcing from India, so we deal with offshore support instead of someone on site. It's usually a painful experience because these folks don't fully understand the systems and applications they're supporting. It must be as frustrating for them as for everyone else involved, and I can see that down the road the processes used by outsourcing companies will need to change or their clients will start putting money back into on-site development and support resources to keep everyone happy.
I know some companies in India would could REALLY use the MAT!