Stan Gibson

Lured by a skilled work force and rock-bottom wages, IT customers are eyeing Chinas outsourcers longingly, with one major misgiving: the risk of losing intellectual property. To take advantage of the opportunity while still protecting sensitive data—customer records, proprietary business practices, patents, copyrights and trade secrets—some U.S. companies are taking a slow and careful approach […]

The trend to get away from big, honkin outsourcing deals first cropped up last year—and its still going strong, it appears. From the customers point of view, it makes sense to keep the deals small so that a customer is not completely beholden to a single vendor. Small deals make it possible to multisource—to draw […]

With year one of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance drawing to a close, many companies are reeling from initial costs and wondering how to contain expenses in the future, even as they seek to glean business benefits from their often-massive compliance projects. This reality contrasts with the urgings of some vendors and consultants, who, in the […]

By now, most large companies have had to comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which mandates that chief executives certify that their companies have controls in place to ensure the accuracy of financial reporting. To achieve initial compliance, IT departments typically worked with auditors to activate application controls within enterprise resource planning packages […]

There never seems to be the last word on offshoring. Reacting to my latest column in this space, several readers took me to task for suggesting federally subsidized community college tuition for out-of-work IT people. When youve got an advanced degree or two, spending a few months at the local CC just doesnt cut it, […]

Even with talk of protectionist barriers in retreat, the topic of offshore outsourcing is still potent enough to generate intense interest. During a recent panel discussion in which I participated with former President Bill Clinton, he expressed broad support for global trade, including, in principle, offshore outsourcing. “Its good for some companies, and, on balance, […]

ASPEN, Colo.—The authorities in China should go further in protecting intellectual property rights, former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell said in remarks here Saturday. However, he said, protectionist laws are not the answer. “There is an increase in tension over a number of the trade issues. We need to make sure the Congress […]

Tata Consultancy Services, Microsoft Corp. and three Chinese firms are forming a joint venture that will provide IT outsourcing services. The company, which will begin operation in 2006, will be “one of the largest IT joint ventures in China,” the participants said in a statement. TCS, which has been operating in China since 2002, will […]

Information technology may be tending toward commodity status, as some pundits believe, but the people who build the systems and provide the services that make up modern IT are not commodities and never will be. Nonetheless, it is easy for managers to view them that way, especially if work is done throughout the world by […]

Its conventional wisdom that in it outsourcing, China is the next India. Its also conventional wisdom that China is not yet ready to be the next India. And it may be conventional wisdom that theres always someone whos ready to attack conventional wisdom. One such attack is coming from Freeborders, an offshore outsourcing company that […]