Malaysia was the centre of the IT world in May, with the 16th 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
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:
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.
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.
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 21st century.
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.
Does Billy Bragg, one of the UK’s most strident and forceful political songwriters of his generation, read the Metagrobolize blog??
15TH 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…..
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.
During a meeting over coffee in London with a friend, who just happens to be a consultant who often works on supplier comparison, helping companies to look at the strengths and weaknesses of different suppliers, and hopefully helping them to pick the right one for their project.
His coffee companion told him that he recently had a client with a fairly small project. Probably about £50,000 a year of work (approx $100,000) to a supplier, comparatively small in comparison to some of the recently announced mega ICT outsource projects, but the client was interesting and so the potential was clearly there for the relationship to grow bigger. It was a helpdesk project that could expand into support for several languages. He went on to say that he had called one of the top 10 Indian suppliers to ask if they would be interested in the project. His call was not returned. He tried calling again. He got nothing but voicemail. After three days of getting voicemail he gave up on them, thinking that if that’s the way they organise their own customer service then how are they going to organise it better for the client?
Far be it from me to suggest that as China responds to global criticism for poor quality goods, artificially low currency and precious little regulation by the introduction of new Chinese labour laws that took effect on Jan 1st which has significantly raised costs in an already tight labour market, as well as Beijing’s cancellation of preferential policies for exporters which has hit Chinese manufacturers hard, corporations are starting to pack their bags.
With the cost / quality playing field now starting to flatten, lets hope that many of the corporations who outsourced to China for the ultra low costs, start to ‘smartsource’ to more mature destinations or will the ‘false god’ of ultra low labour costs cause us to consider over the next year or 2 where Thomas the Tank engine again be derailed? cars crashing due to exploding tyres? (do you remember those) and your pet dog has to employ food tasters again? Will it be Vietnam, India, Myanmar? One thing for sure, its not going to be Malaysia, who long ago went through the kind of industrial restructuring that China is now beginning to experience and has coincidently recently seen a significant rise in FDI, or is that just plain wishful thinking?
