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09/10/2004: "After the call-centre, now the IT department is off to India"

In a shiny new building in the drab construction site that is Noida, a Delhi suburb, teams of young Indian engineers are, in a manner of speaking, managing the world. A number of America's best-known companies have entrusted the remote running of part of their global computing networks to HCL Comnet. This information-technology services firm is at the crest of what Gartner, a consultancy, has called “the next big wave” of Indian outsourcing deals, covering remote “infrastructure-management services”.

India's outsourcing boom started with software development and has expanded into a whole range of business services that can be handled a continent away, of which the country's hundreds of call-centres are just the most prominent examples. This takes that trend one stage further, and shifts offshore much of the administration and maintenance of a firm's IT systems. Gartner's Partha Iyengar divides remote IMS work into three categories: monitoring global network operations; providing helpdesk support and maintenance; and administering databases.



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This seems like the logical endpoint of "lights-out (systems) management" to me. The goal at Wayport and elsewhere was to be able to manage the complete infrastructure from home, while sitting in one's underwear. The stated reason for this is to reduce the requirement for higher-level NOC staff to be present during off-hours shifts, though everyone understands the unvoiced geek detest for corporate dress code and mandatory meetings. Once the systems are enabled for management from anywhere on earth, the suits "outsource" the whole thing to the lowest bidder.

The problem, of course, is that this creates a whole new level of vender-dependence. Its no better than having Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, CA, EDS or any of the other "big IT" solutions involved, because it does nothing to break the chains binding a company's IT resources to a vendor. Its just more of the same sad old story.

Of course, many IT departments are full of inept, blundering idiots who only know how to buy the latest toys for their idle amusements. These same shITs will bleet about how overloaded they are while bitching at the people they support for each inbound request.

With spend-and-moan creatures like this in-place, its no wonder that "IT" has earned the reputation it currently enjoys.