Basman | Explore: IT Outsourcing

You probably noticed how I failed to properly blog in the last couple of months. There are several reasons for this:

• I started this blog as a watchdog for current trends in IT Sourcing and Shoring. More than a year has passed since the start and I have pretty good impressions of those trends and I do not expect that they will change a lot in the next 12-24 months. So after more than 600 posts there is no need for me to watch the IT outsourcing market on a day-by-day basis.
• This blog was never ment to be a showcase for me and neither to be a public blog in the early beginning of its life. Although I was very surprised of the overwhelming international interest in this blog and in its topic. I received a lot of mails in that time and gained a lot of friends and valuable contacts. Particularly from India, China, the Americas and Eastern Europe were I got a lot of support and understanding for this complex domain. This shows me that these regions are far ahead of Central and Western Europe concerning the business.
• Meanwhile I have generated many ideas while studying international shoring & sourcing in real life and via this blog and now some of these ideas will reach its early project stages. I have to focus on this now. So there will not be much time for collecting news and data, analyzing the feeds and publish the results in this blog.

Things will change here in the next weeks and be assured I will inform you in time. Thank you all for tracking this blog, your attentiveness and kind support. I am a man of practice, not of theory. Now I have to take action!

Stay tuned here for more news!

On March 8, 2007 I will be speaking about nearshoring and some trends in IT sourcing and shoring at a show case night in Munich. The event is sponsored by Develine, a global IT service provider from the Ukraine with expertise in .NET and Java application development. The Ukrainian Consul General Dr. Walerij A. Stepanow will attend the event and make a key note about the country as a partner.

The Ukraine is becoming one of the new rising stars in Eastern Europe. So there is a good chance to gather useful insights in a short time about a hot topic. This event will be in German language.

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I’m quite busy with some strategic and exciting projects so blogging is pretty slow these days …

A short video take from Munich at a blogger meeting in the first evening during DLD07. Nevermind the wrong spelling of my family name in the trailer - but you can hear at the beginning of the tape (59 sec) the correct pronunciation of my full name … ;-)

DLD07 was an excellent three day event. Where do you get the chance to experience such an exclusive and brilliant crowd like John Naisbitt, Arianna Huffington, Carlos Bhola, Caterina Fake, Lars Hinrichs, Luc Besson, Lord Norman Foster and many many others out of the field of science, digital life, technology, design, art, architecture, sport, experienced people and youngsters, people you could meet, talk to, discuss, a very attractive mix of innovators, entrepeneurs, drivers, goal getters and assists on stage and in the audience … Absolutely fantastic! This was really a great experience to me.

Thank you all from Burda Media for a very inspiring and warm atmosphere! Very remarkable … Or to say it in a dramatical way: DLD07 - A little digital PreDavos in Munich with a dash of Bambi for the Electronic Age …

KO1P1029, originally uploaded by HBM Marcom.

And thanx for the bags. But - y’now what? Too much heavy bulky clumsy “paper” in the goody bags … This supposed to be a DIGITAL event. How about a small cheap electronic device or something like that? A cool little gadget with all that information. Think about it next time, Heiko ;)

DLD07, Munich, Germany on January 21st - 23rd, 2007

I will meet a lot of friends there and interesting new people, share ideas and network, get some fresh inspiration and some sparring for my own concepts for three days …

If you see me there, don’t hesitate to approach me! You are also welcome to share a drink (or two) with me, exchange business cards and have a nice talk … So let the good times roll, laissez les bon temps rouler!

Now, this is cool. My bloghoster WordPress.com has made a plugin available that allows all blogs here at WP to have Snap Preview Anywhere (SPA for short) enabled. SPA is a little widget that shows people a preview of the page on the other end of a link when they hover over it for a few seconds. I really really like it. Try it and enjoy.

Snap is an Idealab company located in Pasadena, California. These great guys have a bunch of great search related services and concepts. Go there and snap to it, too!

Btw, talking about fun, due to a massive spam tsunami and abuse of the comment function in the last weeks I have decided to change the comment policy here for a while:  Anyone can post a comment. Comment author must fill out name and e-mail. Please use your real and complete name (first name and family name). Additionally, comments are held for moderation (for the first time) and an administrator must always approve the comment. If a comment author had a previously approved comment the comment may be posted immediately unmoderated. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Dear Santa, originally uploaded by caro wanders by mistake.

“Wooden hearts hanging from Fuzhou City´s christmas tree downtown. You gotta write your wish on the heart and hang it on the tree, the higher you hang it, the more chances you´ve got of it coming true…yey!!”

My warmest wishes of peace and joy to all around the world, and a prosperous New Year to you and your families! See you on the other side in 2007 … 

Take care!

Cem Basman

I have restructured the sidebar. The former link list “The Industry” is now split into two new lists: “The Providers” and “The Advisors” according to their role play in the industry and on the market.

However, the border line between these two groups are fluent and blurred. Notice a company like Accenture, which was originally an accounting firm long ago and later on an advisor but now turns out to be one of the most successful and largest providers of outsourcing and even offshoring services. On the other side of the border, some advisors like EquaTerra, Morgan Chambers, neoIT or Navisco are highly specialized in sourcing advisory and they are strict neutral in their working ethics.

In return most of the providers try also to give their customers advice on how to organize their IT sourcing - but of course this advice is for obvious reasons never neutral.

The trend in both categories “The Providers” and “The Advisors” is clear, too: More players and high market dynamics through mergers, aquisitions, spin-offs and splits. At the moment I’m listing 52 global providers and 16 internationally operating dedicated advisors.

The outsourcing and offshoring industry still remains very thrilling. It’s a huge global sandbox for the professional and wannabe strategists, analysts and other specialists …

Further, I have added an automatic Current Most Read (in the last 48 hours) section to the sidebar for your convenience and to satisfy your curiosity. Please watch the Top 5 of what people have most read here currently and enjoy!

I’m down with a very bad cold and fever since Friday. So possibly there won’t be new posts until Monday or maybe even Tuesday. But if I do end up posting just ignore this.

Btw, the photo on the banner in the header is a panoramic picture of La Défense in Paris. Enjoy the weekend.

Oops, I just coincidentally discovered a moment ago that today is the first anniversary of my blog. What would be greater than to thank you all today on my very special and own Thanksgiving Day for your growing support. Within 12 months I posted almost 500 articles about IT Outsourcing and more than 1,000 links to worthy information in the Daily Links category. Thank you readers! And thank you WordPress people for a really reliable and great platform!

This evening I’ve been experiencing a lot of painful server hickups from WordPress.com. They scrambled some of my last postings. Please excuse the inconvinience while I’m repairing my site. These are the risks of an outsourced (and offshored) blog hosting …

Queen Mary 2, originally uploaded by nomoveon.

… docking in Hamburg at night. Always a spectacular view with her lenght of 345m (1,132ft). [Off topic]

Simply said: The entire known universe is now your competitor. Do you complain about Indians, Chinese or Eastern Europeans threatening your jobs? Don’t complain. Think twice:

1. Rapidly emerging countries and regions are your best customers. The faster they grow the more they are demanding for your goods and services. They are in fact creating jobs in your home country, too. That’s a fact.
2. In return: When you offer new services, products or even ideas always produce, deliver and offer to the the entire world - not only to your neighbourhood. You are now a global competitor, too.

That’s the internet for you. You can interact with anybody, anytime, anywhere at no cost.

So, think about it again before complaining.

Now showing: The rooftop of the Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg, Germany. Photo taken by Merlix. A friend and neighbour.