back to article Floods hit India's IT hubs, wash away some credibility

If your Indian suppliers aren't at their most responsive, or you've spent a bit of time on hold to a business process outsourcer over the weekend, look to the heavens for an explanation. Indians are certainly looking in that direction because the nation has experienced deluges in the last few days, with the result being floods …

  1. Tony S

    Test your BC / DR plans

    The problem is that so many senior managers seem to work on the principle "outsource = I don't have to worry". In reality, they should be worrying even more, as so much of what they've outsourced is completely out of their control.

    They are often expecting the external business doing the right thing, when it is far more likely that the 3rd party are trying to keep their costs down. And as a result, anything that doesn't generate an income is seen as being of questionable value, and might even be cut.

    Anyone that has sent work to any external supplier should now be checking on their ability to keep operating when the smelly stuff hits the air circulation equipment. Anyone that doesn't should be held accountable for their negligence.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: what they've outsourced is completely out of their control

      Time is going to teach companies the harsh reality of that statement. The Cloud is still bright and shiny new, and yet I cannot count the number of times that I've heard "all you need is to set your SLAs properly" as a response to anyone questioning the value of handing over control of your data to a 3rd party.

      As if SLAs are going to get to Azure back up in less than 15 minutes after an admin put in a wrong DNS command. Or, in this case, drain all the roads and get everybody back to work on time.

      SLAs work when everything is all right. When things go down, all you have is a phone number that might not even answer. You can rant and rave and shout over the phone about your SLAs all you want, your service will be down until it goes back up and you can do nothing about it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: what they've outsourced is completely out of their control

        You're confusing the concepts of cloud and outsourcing. With cloud, the end-user has control (or should have) and can change things as required. The cloud data centre can be physically located in a facility in the UK and many are.

        Outsourcing is a different prospect. What usually happens is high-up financial bigwig says, we need to cut costs. Why are we paying so much for IT? It's just computers after all. Outsourcer comes in and says, yes we can cut your costs drastically. Everything OK. So contracts are signed and existing staff are either sacked or moved over to the outsourcer. Sometimes they will stay, but often they will either go of their own accord or be sacked as they're too expensive and their job can be done by someone in India.

        The benefit of this is obvious to the financial guy - loads fewer people on the payroll means far less spending.

        The big difference between cloud and outsourcing is with outsourcing you remain tied into your existing kit, which will probably still be physically located somewhere reasonably locally. The new administrators will be trained how to use it, but will be far from being specialists. They will do whatever works to get the job done and on most legacy kit, this is a bad thing as it leads to performance or availability issues in the future. I've seen it myself - passwords and ssh keys shared across an entire enterprise, SAN switches with a single zone "because it's simpler". Uncommented scripts and undocumented procedures, and naturally, the outsourcee has absolutely no control over this. Additionally, none of the outsourcer's staff have any understanding whatsoever about the business and can't correlate or conceptualise what they're doing with the needs of the business. Nor do they care as they're being paid crap. Yes, Indians also need to feed and clothe their families.

        On that point, don't take this as a dig at Indians. I know plenty of Indians who are very skilled and knowledgeable: they're usually the most frustrated by negligent bosses and the lies and deceit. The problem is the diminishing role of the administrator, which applies there as much as here. Admins are seen by upper management as expendable - they're the guys who just push buttons and do the manual stuff. They're ripe to be replaced by machines or moved to a lower-cost country. In reality a good admin knows how their domain fits into the bigger picture, and has the freedom to constantly evolve that domain to fit the needs of the business. This is rarely the case though: such roles are often left to architects, who introduce rules and processes, some necessary and others not.

        So the admin role is diminished to the point that nobody really wants to be one. Salaries are far too low: I saw a very demanding looking job in London on Linkedin recently - £35K. Really?

        Floods in India are a tangible way of showing how businesses lose control when they outsource, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than that. Unfortunately, it's going to take the loss of a business or two before something's done about it and people are held accountable for their negligence and greed.

        Anonymous because I know decision makers who have outsourced their IT.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Re: what they've outsourced is completely out of their control

          When the cloud gets wobbly, what exactly is it that you control ?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: what they've outsourced is completely out of their control

            I see with your point, but there aren't many businesses who have their own datacentres nowadays. You're always dependent on someone else to some extent. If you don't architect against disasters and a disaster happens, then you have nobody else to blame.

            The difference is when you outsource your IT, they're now in control of your production and your DR, including the strategy, implementing it, and executing it if necessary. If it fails, you can blame them all you want, screaming SLAs until you're blue in the face, but it's not going to get your business back.

            If you put some workloads on someone else's cloud, and have a DR strategy which involves a backup copy somewhere else, you're protected against the failure of the first. It's your choice, and up to you to make it work. In short, you still have control. As I said previously, there's a big difference. Cloud isn't for everyone, and is just another tool to keep the business running. It won't solve all your problems, and may not solve any, but the normal rules of running a business's IT infrastructure still apply.

            1. Fatman

              Re: what they've outsourced is completely out of their control

              <quote>The difference is when you outsource your IT, they're now in control.. If it fails, you can blame them all you want, ... </quote>

              Those two excerpts are part of Damagement 101 How to Destroy a Company Through Sheer Incompetence.

              The First Rule of Damagement: Never Accept Responsibility for YOUR Incompetence.

              The Second Rule of Damagement: Always Deflect the Blame Upon Others.

              The Third Rule of Damagement: Always Feign Ignorance of Potentially Disastrous Outcomes.

              Repeat at each new employer until someone finally figures just how incompetent you are and send you on a deserved career path into a brick wall.

        2. hplasm
          Meh

          Re: what they've outsourced is completely out of their control

          Cloud vs Outsource?

          When Outsource goes down, something bad is happening somewhere.

          When Cloud goes down, something bad is happening Everywhere.

  2. Christoph

    Management were taken by surprise by the appearance of the monsoon. Obviously they can't be held responsible for the failure to predict something that happens every year.

  3. Ellis Birt 1

    Blame game

    When you outsource, you also introduce a third party into every every application installation/upgrade/support call.

    You end up with:

    * The company wants the application up and running ASAP

    * The application vendor wants to get the application up and running quickly so they can move on to the next customer.

    * The IT outsourcing provider want to make as much money out of it as they can without spending a penny. AKA without diverting anyone with the necessary skills from fee-earning consultancy

    "Select * From..."

    "I cannot see a checkbox to select anything"

  4. Stevie

    Bah!

    But ... Didn't the outsourcers learn about rain in India at school? Or from the yearly washouts that take down India-based ops with a Swiss-like precision?

  5. Raj

    "Credibility affected" by the inability to handle 17-20cm of rain in ONE day ? Is this news from the same UK where trains get delayed by 'the wrong sort of leaves' ?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/8166103/Wrong-sort-of-leaves-hit-train-punctuality.html

    Or is this some different magical hyper-efficient UK where nothing ever fails to work, giving you the gilded high horse to sit on and tut-tut from ? Yeah, I thought not.

    Just another case of 70 years of British compulsiveness to look down upon India. All British news by default is biased as a result. You simply cannot help but be d1cks when it comes to any topic remotely involving India .

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

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