Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

It is possible to find people on all sides of the technical outsourcing debate. Since much of the business software that you use contain some outsourced components, you should be interested in the latest trends in outsourcing. The latest trend seems to be a directional one. Outsourcing appears to be moving a bit to the West. Yes, the West. How can West be an outsourcing trend?

The answer involves the latest major entry in the outsourcing phenomenon. First, remember that wherever there is outsourcing, there exists the ubiquitous business park. These outsourcing meccas dot India. Now one has popped up just outside of Cairo. Tenants in this business park include IBM, Eriksson, Dell Computers, Microsoft, and Satyam Computer services, a major Indian player in the outsourcing field.

Asked why they had located near Cairo, a Satyam spokesman said, “Egypt has a large population with a lower income and good-quality manpower.” That translates into there being people there who will work on the cheap. And, of course, cheap is the major touchstone in the outsourcing movement. It is all, simply and completely, about bigger profits. It is not, in any way, involved in superior performance.

This writer, at least, questions these motives, abundant in all manufacturing areas in addition to software production and support call centers. Cut jobs in countries with a high-tech population, such as Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Add jobs in countries with low wages and few barriers to poor human resources practices. Exploit those countries until the standard of living starts to rise. Then move on.

This cycle, lived over and over again by almost all of the worlds largest corporations, is very discriminatory to employees, after all. They are people, not mineral ore, though they are being treated more like the latter. Meanwhile, the long-time high-tech and manufacturing leaders, mostly those countries where the leading corporations are based, suffer economic consequences, also involving actual suffering human beings.

The corporation certainly has some of the standing of a human being under the law. But it is obvious that the corporation has no heart, and in many cases that it is led by people with few human feelings. In their corporate anonymity, any action is possible and acceptable. Now is there much logic involved. When the house of cards starts to come down, the corporate cards will fall along with the rest.