Computer Outsourcing: The Dirty Word
Outsourcing has a stigma attached to the technology industry. This stigma has gotten its hooks into the technology industry more than most industries. Even a company like General Electric, with thousands of business tentacles that reach into almost every industry needs help from other companies. Outsourcing and technology are heard in the same sentence quite often but it’s the same situation you have with you lawyer(s), accountants(s), shipping, payroll services, design firms, advertising firm… a quick look at your vendor list will confirm this.
The reason I bring this up is not to separate technology’s name from a stigma, it’s to make sure it’s being looked at on a level field. Outsourcing is a ubiquitous business fact; a delegation of tasks or processes to another firm that specifically focuses on a particular business process to allow a company to focus on its main mission (a mission that is quite probably an outsourcing of systems, services, products, or tasks for that would be considered outsourcing itself). In the field of technology, outsourcing implies a shift of work overseas. The correct term in today’s parlance for a shifting of work and wages overseas is offshoring not outsourcing. Except for application development where almost any sizeable project will probably have some work done abroad, outsourcing IT related management tasks is simply a service akin to allowing a payroll service to calculate taxes and withholdings on employee’s paychecks.