Surviving Offshore Cutbacks

Project management and industry expertise provide workers the best protection.

By Patrick Thibodeau and Thomas Hoffman

April 28, 2003 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Jim Honerkamp, CIO at Clopay Corp., a building products maker in Mason, Ohio, is one of the people shaping the future of the American IT workforce.
By shipping some of the company's IT programming and application development work to India, Honerkamp has reduced Clopay's IT staff from 90 people, including consultants, to 35. He has no regrets about this decision. Outsourcing many IT functions has kept his budget stable and allowed him to add services. The decision to outsource network management, for instance, let him add network monitoring and other services for the same price.
Outsourcing is a necessity, Honerkamp says. "You really don't have much choice. I don't see how we can justify $90 to $130 an hour," when offshore services charge a third of those hourly rates. "I think the generic programmer [in the U.S.] is really threatened by this," he says.
Indeed, the U.S. IT jobs most adversely affected by offshore outsourcing are programming-related. IT professionals involved in integration work on business-process projects or those who have new technology skills have the best chance of surviving.


Jim Honerkamp, CIO at Clopay Corp.

The U.S IT professionals who are most in demand often have specific industry or software package skills, such as those used in health care or SAP and PeopleSoft systems, said Russ Tessman, a manager at Vermillion Group/MRI, an IT recruiting company in Des Moines, Iowa. But professionals with general skills such as Java development and Visual Basic programming -- "those are the guys really struggling to find new opportunities," he says.
There's also a need for qualified project managers, especially people who know how to bring projects in on time, notes Marty Clague, president and CEO of Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Covansys Corp., which provides offshore IT services in India. IT workers with communications technology and networking skills are also needed in the U.S., according to Clague. There aren't enough people who understand networks, how to run them, build them and protect them, he says.
But this career advice is based on the kinds of services being provided offshore today, not tomorrow. The future for U.S. IT professionals may get worse.

What do you think about the trend to export IT jobs? Post your opinions and see what others have to say in our discussion forum.

Advanced networking and storage technologies are working to turn IT into a utility, something that can be managed anywhere, anyplace, says Andre Mendes, chief technology integration officer at Public Broadcasting Service in Alexandria, Va.
"The truth is that as we continue to progress, the cost of providing a secure environment for a company is going to be too large," says Mendes. "There are going to be too many variables, too many unknowns, and at what point do you say, 'No, I want a company that does this for a living to worry about these things on a 24/7 basis.' "
With backbone networks operating at almost zero latency worldwide, there's nothing to stop the heart of a corporate IT department -- its data center -- from being moved offshore, Mendes says. "If communication links are not only ubiquitous but extremely reliable, then what difference does it make if it's down the block or around the country?"

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

POLL RESULTS

Leading IT Pros Weigh In on Top IT Issues

Accelerate your knowledge of the IT world you inhabit by viewing the results of a series of polls taken by your IT peers. These polls of 100+ IT professionals each are available for full viewing. They cover key topics such as virtualization, processor performance, green IT, cloud computing and many others. Be a part of the buzz.

WHITE PAPER

For Best Results, Think Beyond the Box

Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. Download now!

WHITE PAPER

Accelerating the Path to Demand Intelligence with a Demand Signal Repository

Utilizing demand intelligence improves the precision of pricing, product assortments, channel/store placement, and promotion, which are all essential for sustainable revenue management performance. Learn more, download this free whitepaper today.

White Papers & Webcasts

IT Vendor Management with Oblicore Guarantee
(Source: Oblicore) In the context of a global recession, companies are realizing that they need to take an active role in dealing with...

Strategic ECM Webinar
Learn what new strategic business benefits can be realized through ECM!...

The Rise of Service Level Management in ITIL V3
(Source: Oblicore) The third volume of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL V3) expands the role of Service Level Management (SLM) in aligning...

Managing And Protecting Your Ever Increasing Mobile Assets
Learn best practices for desktop and application virtualization, computer security, and computer life-cycle management....

The Metrics Driven Organization: Your Business in Challenging Times
This white paper discusses how metrics increase visibility and sharpen decision making to ensure excellent customer service, rising revenue and growth....

5 Architecture Issues that Impact BES performance
This Live webinar will identify critical log file errors, performance counters, and configurations to pay close attention to when optimizing BES server performance....

Using Collaboration to Achieve Business Goals
This whitepaper reviews information management, CRM, HRM, project management, portals, document and workflow management and other assets that run business operations and should...

Usability Is Everything
Learn what sets Workday's HR and Payroll solutions apart from the competition....

2009 Gartner Magic Quadrant Report
Truly understand your options for WAN Optimization Controllers...

The Value of Real SaaS at Workday
Cost savings, speed to value, and innovation brought to the enterprise by Workday's software-as-a-service solutions for HR and Payroll....

All White Papers | All Webcasts