โ Scribed by Robert Davison
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The information technology offshoring phenomenon is growing at a tremendous pace. Increasingly it is now seen as a business necessity rather than an option, with increasing numbers of organizations, notably in Western Europe and North America, taking advantage of the availability of offshore resources that are both cheaper and present in significant quantities. IT offshoring may be disliked or feared, loved or worshipped, but it is inevitable and as such should be on the action list of managers, whether global or local, worldwide. This new book from Carmel and Tjia is essential reading for managers, IT practitioners, software development engineers, business, management and IT professors, as well as students in these disciplines.
It is quite remarkable for a book of this genre that it should be equally readable by and valuable for such a wide audience: the language is crisp and precise, without requiring much knowledge of the jargon of the software and IT industries. At the same time it is insightful, intellectually stimulating, and comprehensive. It should, furthermore, be relevant to readers in both developed and developing nations, to providers of offshore services as well as users of these services.
The twelve chapters that comprise Offshoring Information Technology cover both the fundamentals of the domain and more specialized topics such as legal issues, culture and national differences, marketing (from the provider perspective), virtual work, and political considerations associated with offshoring (both domestic and international). Practical aspects of offshoring are covered as well, with chapters on how an offshore strategy can be developed and the management of the transition process that leads to successful offshoring. A focus on success is appropriate, for there are all too many examples of offshoring failures. Such examples, of successes and failures, are liberally distributed throughout the book, together with longer cases and shorter vignettes. These sources of front-line stories greatly enhance the usefulness of the book, giving readers a much enhanced sense of what An earlier version of this review was originally published in the
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