Outsourcing entered the business lexicon in the 1980s and often refers to the delegation of non-core operations from internal production to an external entity specialising in the management of that operation. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of worldwide labour, capital, technology and resources. Though often used interchangeably, outsourcing differs from offshoring in that outsourcing is relative to the restructuring of the firm while offshoring is relative to the nation (see below), though the two are not mutually exclusive, especially under conditions of globalization. Fundamentally and historically, outsourcing is a term relative to the organisation of labour within and between societies.
Contents

Overview

“Outsourcing” involves transferring or sharing management control and/or decision-making of a business function to an outside supplier, which involves a degree of two-way information exchange, coordination and trust between the outsourcer and its client. Such a relationship between economic entities is qualitatively different from traditional relationships between buyer and seller of services in that the involved economic entities in an “outsourcing” relationship dynamically integrate and share management control of the labour process rather than enter in contracting relationships where both entities remain separate in the coordination of the production of goods and services. Business segments typically outsourced include information technology, human resources, facilities and real estate management, and accounting. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions, manufacturing and engineering. Consequently, a debate has ensued concerning the benefits and costs of the practice as well as how to categorize it as a phenomenon.

Xcerion’s Internet Cloud Forms Over Google and Microsoft

The company plans to offer an XML-based Internet operating system and development platform that replicates the desktop computing experience from inside a Web browser and adds the benefits of cloud-based computing.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek

March 2, 2007 01:00 PM
In the third quarter of 2007, an all-but-unknown Swedish software company plans to release a new, free operating system that has the potential to radically alter the economics of software development. If successful, it may be able to further erode the power Microsoft derives from control of the desktop, to beat Google at its software-as-a-service play, and to make commodity Linux boxes more viable as a computing platform for the masses.

“What Skype did for telephony, we want to do for software development,” said CEO Daniel Arthursson. “We’re enabling the ‘Long Tail’ for business software.”

For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser. In a way, XIOS is an abstraction layer that sits atop a true operating system like Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, just as does Transmedia’s Flash-based Glide Next media sharing environment.

But XIOS aims to provide lower-level functionality. It’s not simply an interface for media sharing. Rather, it’s a complete XML-based operating system and development platform that replicates the desktop computing experience from inside the browser and adds the benefits of cloud-based computing, where applications and data are available over the network.

Watch it in action and you’ll see a visual representation of the threat it poses to Windows: Double-click on the application and the familiar desktop interface appears inside the browser window. Expand the browser window in full-screen mode and the Windows desktop vanishes beneath it. Of course the XIOS environment could just as easily look like the Mac OS desktop or something else entirely. This is what Microsoft feared Netscape would do, turn its main asset, the operating system, into middleware.

There are several reasons why one might want to run an XML-based operating system in a Web browser: security, data portability, freedom from hardware and platform lock-in, cost, built-in collaboration, and development productivity.

Hundreds of communities of all sizes are making decisions about how to best deliver universal, affordable access to high-speed information networks. Many are offered seemingly attractive arrangements with no upfront cost to the city. They do themselves and their households and businesses a disservice if they do not seriously explore the costs and benefits of a publicly owned network.

In this report, five arguments for public ownership are highlighted.

1. High-speed information networks are essential public infrastructure.

Just as high quality road systems are needed to transport people and goods, high quality wired and wireless networks are needed to transport information.

We are launching a new offer for Yahoo Store Designing. If you are thinking of a New Yahoo Store or a Redesign of an existing store, you would not get better offerings than this. We also have launched a lot of NEW Features that are specially crafted keeping in mind the new platform for Y! Stores and we want you to atleast know about the same for your future needs.

Special Offer till April 2007 - Sign up Now!

The recent offer includes a FREE Integration of Checkout Manager to your store.

Always evaluate the communication ablities of your outsourcing vendor along with technical and operational competencies.

So you’ve decided to outsource certain functions to India as part of a corporate revenue and growth strategy and are scouting around for a partner. Bear in mind that while judging the technical and operational competencies of potential vendors, you need to simultaneously test their communication abilities too. An outsourcing deal is a long-term relationship and anything short of open and honest communication can wreck the partnership.

As a client, you expect:

(a) Correctness - in terms of the how the work is to be done,

(b) Completeness - of all work done, and

(c) Commitment to deadlines.