News

ADT at Gartner ITxpo: Another vote to endorse offshoring

• By Rich Seeley
• March 30, 2004

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- IT management needs to embrace offshore outsourcing, despite the "genuine threat" of job losses, because the trend is not going to go away, asserted Michael Fleisher, chairman and CEO of Gartner. In his welcoming address to attendees at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2004 in San Diego on Monday, he argued that two popular responses, protectionism and blaming others, including the people of India and China, are doomed to failure.

''We must act from knowledge, not fear,'' Fleisher told an audience made up largely of IT managers in a packed ballroom in the San Diego convention center. At the same time, he conveyed Gartner's view that many of the IT jobs currently being outsourced will ''disappear in the next few years'' due to advances in technology. He also asked his audience to remember that there is nothing new about technology changing the workforce. It has been going on since automobiles put blacksmiths out of business and direct dial telephones sent telephone operators into retirement.

Facing the offshore challenge head-on, Fleisher said, "IT managers and executives best strategy for survival" is to embrace the trend.

''Become your company's authority on outsourcing,'' he told his audience.

This will include helping organizations decide what business processes to send offshore and which to keep inside the company.

To keep up with the changing computing world, Fleisher said IT management needs to focus on four trends that Gartner believes will be crucial to business computing by 2006. These are secure wireless networks, "always on" mobile computing, cheaper computing power and especially Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which he said will make cheaper and faster application development possible.