Metagrobolize

16th World Congress on IT 2008 Report Card

Glen Stidolph — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:36:08 +0000

Malaysia was the centre of the IT world in May, with the 16^th WCIT 2008 summit now being cited as being the biggest ever. The cost of hosting this global summit was subject to local comment, so just how did it benefit the hosts. With figures now released by the Malaysian government, here’s our report card.

Delegate Figures; over 7’000 delegates attended the 16th WCIT 2008 Summit, making it the largest ever. Score A+Visitor information; over 50,000 participants attended WCIT2008 and related events and the exhibition. Score A

Identified Business Opportunities:

a. Over 800 meetings were held over the duration of the summit and its related events. Score B.

b. Over RM1.24 Billion of business opportunities were identified through these meetings. Score A

c. Over RM2.0 Billion worth of potential investments were identified through these meetings - Of which 10 FDI and 26 DDI, with more than 13,000 jobs. Score A.

Sales and investments secured; Over the duration of WCIT2008 and its related events, Malaysia secured total sales and investments worth RM8.3 Billion – creating more than 20,000 new jobs. Score A+

Overall score: AComments; A resounding success for Malaysia and its expanding ICT industry. The A+ was within Malaysia’s grasp, however Malaysia failed to fully engage its SME ICT companies in their participation of the Summit and needs a little reminder that in a ‘team showcase event’ like this, the stronger players need to reach down and assist their smaller colleagues.

Free Quarterly Outsourcing Report

Glen Stidolph — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:47:28 +0000

Those clever people at Everest Research have just released Quarterly Vista report (Q1 2008)

Quarterly Market Vista reports provide data and analysis highlighting key trends and developments in the fast evolving global offshoring and outsourcing market. Market Vista is designed to empower buyers and suppliers with continuously updated insights, analysis and data to optimize ongoing management of globally sourced portfolios.

The scope of the report covers critical and highly relevant topics in:

Outsourcing transaction trends
Captive-related issues
Global offshoring dynamics
Location risks and opportunities
Key supplier developments

The link to register for your free report is http://www.everestresearchinstitute.com/Product/10324

UK students outsource ‘Contract Cheating

Glen Stidolph — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:03:19 +0000

This is the spirit of lateral thinking that helped Britain build its empire, birthplace and home to some of the best engineers in the world and the use of newspaper to keep your fish and chips warm as you walk through the freezing streets of most seaports around our great island.

British students are using online freelance expertise in IT to complete their course assignments by posting request for Quotations (RFQ’s) of their coursework on outsourcing websites and buying the completed coursework.

Called “contract cheating” in academic circles, lecturers in computing departments in universities are struggling to recognize outsourced assignments since such coursework is of high quality and difficult to detect through normal plagiarism detection software.

The trend is particularly seen in IT courses, in which students need to write programs and students can pay amounts ranging from 5 to 50 pounds for the completed coursework that they then pass off as their own work and gain their degrees.

The students use legitimate websites normally used by business, offering freelance project work or tutorial sites specifically set up for the purpose.

I’m sure that if they flunk their IT course, various direct sales marketing companies would welcome such entrepreneurial spirit with open arms.

Beware of Cheap Chairs!!!

Glen Stidolph — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:54:28 +0000

Once again, we have stories of poor quality manufacturing in China, with this latest article involving chairs, supporting a move to Smart Sourcing of manufacturing to countries that have a far more mature manufacturing sector. After seeing this, I wouldn’t buy a chair from there.

Please beware that Wal-Mart is selling lounge chairs made in China, the plastic is very cheap and thin. Purchase at your own risk!!!

THOSE CHEAP WAL-MART CHAIRS
DON’T BUY EM

Act in haste, repent at leisure..

Glen Stidolph — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:38:20 +0000

For the last few years I’ve been a bi-annual visitor to my home shores of the UK getting all too brief snapshots of my kids development through their teenage years as they accelerate towards adulthood. Similarly I also get snapshots of the UK business landscape and how its changing too. I’ve just returned from a business trip to UK, and since my last visit only 4 months ago, there seems to be a very pronounced change in attitudes towards outsourcing. Perhaps it’s the dramatic escalation in costs, which has been all to tangible on my last 2 visits, perhaps it’s the strong feeling for a need of change in politics which seems to hang so heavily in the air. There is no doubt that there has been a very definite, palpable change in the mindset of business owners and decision makers. There is almost an air of ‘haste’ to outsource, which is good news indeed for the various service providers, however I have concerns over the levels of comprehension of many companies entering into enterprise changing decisions of just how difficult and complex a process this can be. I hope its not a case of act in haste repent at leisure.

Evening All…Facebookers and Welcome to 21st century policing.

Glen Stidolph — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:25:49 +0000

Last week, Greater Manchester Police became the first U.K. police force to establish a presence on Facebook. Greater Manchester Police established an application called GMP Updates on Facebook, providing users with crime news, appeals and missing-persons stories.
Individual stories can be shared with a user’s contacts and users can add comments to the feed. The application also links users to an external Web site where they can anonymously submit information on crimes or view YouTube videos related to ongoing investigations.
An excellent idea on how to ‘outsource’ criminal investigation, a genuine attempt at bringing some of the communal policing that we used to have when I was a kid, or a sinister plot to develop information about the contacts of people possibly involved in criminal activities…..
As I can’t believe that people involved in criminal activities are stupid enough to add the GMP application, I have to believe in their good intentions and compliment them on their vision to use the extended reach of this social network to assist them. Community policing for the 21^st century.

Call centre screening software, (next step marriage guidance)

Glen Stidolph — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:05:55 +0000

Apparently a Sapporo based company, Digital Technologies Corp, has developed a software that can analyse the mood of callers phoning into call centres.

According to a report on Nikkei.net, the software can establish whether the person on the other side of the line is sober, slightly outraged, or simply barking mad.

It bases its analysis on biometrics and divides the results into whether a caller is happy or displeased, on a scale of one to seven. The report doesn’t relate whether if things go to the top end of the scale, whether the call centre will put them on hold indefinitely and refuse to engage with them any more on human rights grounds, or assign them to an anger management course. (Sponsored by the Call Centre of course)

Lets look at this from a broader application, and first up.. could it be scaled up to avert those occasional domestic ‘disagreements’ caused when our wife or girlfriends claim that men are empathy black holes when trying to gauge their all to frequent mood swings…?

American companies reaffirm their commitment to Malaysia.

Glen Stidolph — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:28:09 +0000

With worries of US recession and possible corporate cost cutting exercises on the horizon, The American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) President, Vincent Leusner, has reaffirmed that US-based companies operating in Malaysia were unlikely to move to other countries in the region, despite the available lower labour and operational costs in other South East Asian countries.
“Malaysia has a pool of highly skilled workers required by American companies to handle high-end manufacturing, in addition to the country’s world class infrastructure.
Malaysia’s highly skilled personnel, especially in the semiconductor industry, do not require substantial investments in training, unlike in ‘cheaper’ countries such as Vietnam”, Leusner said. In addition, American companies in Malaysia do not experience high staff turnover and wage-inflation issues compared with both China and India.

Famous readership

Glen Stidolph — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:58:52 +0000

Does Billy Bragg, one of the UK’s most strident and forceful political songwriters of his generation, read the Metagrobolize blog??

15^TH June 2007, part of our “This might be taking outsourcing too far“ series (Part 2)

Where we discussed the European investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons in Europe that revealed evidence pointing to the existence of a system of “outsourcing” of torture by the United States…..

Around that time, the aforementioned Mr Bragg was writing a new track for his recently released album; O Freedom, a rallying cry against Guantanamo and the outsourcing of torture in the War on Terror, which includes the lyrics “There was no guilty verdict/ Yet still I was detained/ Flown to another country /Where their methods are less constrained” he sings, before ending with a message to the MoD securocrats: “Who will pay the price of injustice such as this/ Turns our protectors to oppressors/ And angry men to terrorists?”

Its ok Billy, we wont ask for any royalties, just keep up the good work.

Outsourcing offenders (Literally)

Glen Stidolph — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:32:22 +0000

Criminal justice in many countries is designed on the presumption that the prime objective is rehabilitation into society. Not punishment, not restitution, and most law abiding citizens are happy to provide a second or maybe a third chance. (Look at the 3 strikes and out system employed in many states f the US) But hey, the repeat offenders are not going to rehabilitate, and we all know it. So they just need to be taken out of circulation where they can no longer cause the public at large any more problems.

Outsourcing is a model that you can procure cheaper services or labour outside your home market thus making your business more competitive, so how bout the strategic outsourcing of repeat offenders.

Long-term criminals cost approx $90 - 120k per year to hold. Also they can be a danger to, and/or an impediment to, the successful rehabilitation of less serious criminals by housing them in the same cells.

The incarceration rates in most developed countries are rising, as is the building of new prisons to accommodate this increase, which can be approx the same build cost as a Hi- Tech school or Hospital, and I know which I would prefer to see more being built.

What if there was a simple solution to:

Reducing crime rates (Due to the possibility of being incarcerated in a Low Cost Country facility)

Increased rehabilitation rates (Its unlikely that many offenders would like to come back to Low Cost Country facilities)

Increasing FDI in developing countries.

Yes, the answer is of course, Outsourcing. It is significantly cheaper to ‘house’ repeat offenders in Prisons in a country such as Malaysia, than UK, US, Australia and most other developed countries.

Lets say most countries set the bar similar to the US with its 3 strikes and then (Literally) OUT! Most criminals who are convicted for a 3^rd offence get in excess of a 5 year sentence, making it cost effective to outsource, as well as allowing the prison service to perform higher leverage tasks of trying to rehabilitee less hardened criminals.

The cost of housing such offenders in Malaysia would be approx $20K per year of less, and as I live in Malaysia, I know that they are very unlikely to get afforded the same luxuries they would enjoy in modern prisons, perhaps leading prison to being the deterrent that it should be, once a criminal has served their time and not somewhere they don’t mind going back too.

A saving of $100.00 P/A per prisoner, prison staff being able to fulfil higher leverage tasks, lower number of repeat offenders and higher rehabilitation figures….can someone please point out any downside?