Archive for May, 2005
While interacting with
my colleagues and customers, I have seen the terms Offshoring and Outsourcing
used interchangably. Sometimes they say Outsourcing whereas they
really are talking about Offshroing and vice versa. Sometimes they
are talking about both. Here is my attempt to compare and contrast the two terms
and to also show the relationship between the two.
Basically, Outsourcing and Offshoring while often used together
can also be used in a mutually exclusive manner. Let me explain what I am thinking
using the following 4 basic combinational models. I will use the same definitions
of the terms Owner and Outsourcer from my earlier post on
Outsourcing
Models.
- No outsourcing, No offshoring - Onshore, Internal:
Nickname: In-On : In this model, the Owner does not really
Outsource, but might be delegating the activity to an internal group within
the Owner‘s company. This activity is performed by the internal group onshore.
No outsourcing, No offshoring
- No Outsourcing, Internal Offshoring - Offshore, Internal:
Nickname: In-Off : This is same as the above model, except
that the activity even though is within the same company, is shifted to be
performed offshore at the company‘s location in another country than the Owner‘s
home country. This is offshoring without outsourcing.
- Outsourcing, No Offshoring - Onshore, External:
Nickname: Out-On : This is the first model of outsourcing
where the Outsourcer is basically in the same location/country as the Owner.
- Outsourcing, Offshoring - Offshore, External:
Nickname: Out-Off : This is the second model of outsourcing
where the Outsource is offshore. This model is the one that gets most attention
in the industry thus leading to the two terms (Outsourcing and Offshoring)
being used interchangeably in my opinion.
In defining the models above, I am tempted to use the term Insourcing to
describe In-On and In-Off models, because that is what it
is. But there are other
usages of that term that led me to avoid using it for the time being. In-Off
and Out-On models demostrate the mutually exclusive nature of outsourcing
and offshoring.
Outsourcing
Offshoring
Software
May 26th, 2005
I
have been wondering a bit on why IT industry analysts are not yet blogging.
Like many in my field, I occasionally look at what the analysts and pundits
are saying about different trends in the industry. 
” border=”0″>
I remember early days in my career when I paid great attention to many different
reports from many analyst reports on any topic from CASE tools to RISC vs. CISC
to CAD/CAM to RDBMS to almost anything I could get my hands on. Since these
reports were exorbitantly priced, the company I used to work for could only
afford to buy a select few and that too when the reports were slightly older
and probably obsolete. They were certainly entertaining and sometimes enlightening.
Am I glad the internet came around when it did. ![]()
” src=”http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/alur/flashbackend.gif”>
Anyway, I wanted to check out how my analyst brethren are doing in the blogging
world. And here is what I found. Almost no one really blogs in the analyst world.
Or if they do, I could not find them. I did a preliminary search to find any
blogs out there from any analysts and here is what I found so far:
To
make some sense of this, I had a brief session with HAL
9000 and he came up with the chart shown here. According to HAL, the more
inclined you are to be an Analyst, the less probable it is that you
are going to blog because you already have a full-time job publishing your analysis
that makes money for your company. But then, I could have given wrong input
to HAL (GIGO, remember), in
which case if you know of an analyst blog(s), please provide the link(s) in
your comment so HAL can compute.
Blogging
Blog
May 24th, 2005
I remember this old but
cool movie called Powers of Ten, which was an elaborate creation of photographic art based
on the work of Ray and Charles Eames. The movie is basically a series of images
that scale up or down by a power of 10 to show the continuous connection between
the very large (universe) and the very small (atoms or sub-atomic particles).
I tracked the official Ray and Charles Eames site at Eames
Office which links to this Powers of
Ten site which talks about the 9 minute original movie and other related
stuff. If you don‘t want to shell out for the DVD, then be satisfied with this
online Java Applet imitation. A couple of years ago someone
had emailed me that
link which I rediscovered today. This is not the original Powers of Ten,
but gets the point across. It‘s Java, online and free!
Life Universe
May 20th, 2005
Outsourcing
is an increasingly popular trend in the IT industry. However, from an architectural
prespective, there are many nuances about outsourcing that I have been focussing
on lately to understand.
Let me discuss different models of outsourcing I have seen from a software
development perspective. I suspect these models are applicable for any systems
development. But, software is my game and I am sticking to it. Let us categorize
the project activities broadly into 5 areas: Requirements/Analysis, Design,
Development, Deployment and Management/Maintenance. The Owner is an
entity (team, department, division, company) that owns the project and the Outsourcer
is an entity (mostly in another company) that executes various tasks assigned
by the Owner. The Owner is always in charge of the requirements so outsourcing
that activity may not make much sense in most cases. Anyway, I have seen several
different models of outsourcing when it comes to IT organizations working with
an Outsourcer. I have categorized them as follows:
Model 1: All In (AI)
This is the traditional model of development where everything is done inhouse,
i.e. no outsourcing.
Model 2: Development Out (DO)
Outsource only the development activity. The Owner is still responsible for
design and is trying to leverage lower development costs by outsourcing the
development activity. Once the Outsourcer completes development, the code is
brought inhouse for deployment, management and maintenance.
Model 3: Design Out, Develop Out (DODO)
[No, not that Dodo, although
there might be some similarities] This model extends Model 2, but in this case
the design also becomes a responsibility of the Outsourcer. This is more suitable
if the Owner has limited IT development capabilities (e.g. skills & resources).
Model 4: Design In, Rest Out (DIRO)
In this model, the Owner designs the system and delegates the development, deployment
and management of the system to the Outsourcer. I don‘t see a value in this
model for most scenarios. If you are going to hand off the management of the
system to the Outsourcer, let them design as they see fit.
Model 5: All Out (AO)
This is the inverse of Model 1 where the Owner delegates all activities (except
for Requirements) to the Outsourcer. This is similar to the ASP
model. This is the model that most Outsourcers might prefer. If executed properly,
this can be a win-win scenario for both parties.
Some of the customers I have talked to have been experimenting with Model 2
and Model 3. And this model exhibits the pain points of architecture and design.
When you are designing a system and having someone else implement it, it becomes
a tedious and sometimes impossible task to govern the architecture and design
of the system on a continuous basis. A lot of architects in this model spend
their cycles on the phone talking to the developers in a different world trying
to communicate the design intentions and the confirm and validate the developer
implementations to ensure those intentions are addressed and implemented.
What do you think? Do these models make sense? Have you seen other models? What are the (architectural/design/development related) pain points for architects when dealing with outsourcing?
May 26 2005: Also see this followup.
Outsourcing Software
May 18th, 2005
Interesting indeed.
From James Snell‘s blog:
As these guidelines were being drafted, we drew heavily upon our own experiences as bloggers and the excellent prior art in this space graciously provided by Sun, Microsoft, Groove and many others who have drafted policies and guidelines for their employees.
As you know, I have ranted before on anonymous (when-there-is-no-reason-to-be-anonymous) blogs before. So I find the following excerpt from the IBM Blogging Policy relevant and interesting to note:
Be who you are. Some bloggers work anonymously, using pseudonyms or false screen names. IBM discourages that in blogs, wikis or other forms of online participation that relate to IBM, our business or issues with which the company is engaged. We believe in transparency and honesty. If you are blogging about your work for IBM, we encourage you to use your real name, be clear who you are, and identify that you work for IBM. Nothing gains you notice in the “blogosphere” more than honesty — or dishonesty. If you have a vested interest in something you are discussing, be the first to point it out. But also be smart about protecting yourself and your privacy. What you publish will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully and also be judicious in disclosing personal details.
For a somewhat funny outtake on this, check this out.
Dear IBMer's, Welcome to the Blogosphere!
Blogging IBM
May 17th, 2005
So I saw
this thing about Sun Bloggers and South Park characters at Geoff‘s
blog. I could not resist giving it a spin. Here is what I ended up with as my very
own South Park character. How do I look?
Check out Janina's website
to create your own character.
Cartoon Life
May 16th, 2005
Lots
of things happen in a cab. I have met some interesting cabbies over the years.
OK, and some not so interesting ones as well.
Ok, first it was the chefs.
Now, the cabbies are out to get me 
On the way to Chicago couple days ago, the cabbie that took me to the airport
was an Afghan. He asked me where I was from and I said I am from around here.
I knew what he was going to say next:
"No, where are you really from? You must be from India…"
And then he starts blasting Bollywood music on the car stereo. I am like:
"Hello? Can you please turn the volume down? I am getting a call dude."
Inevitably, when I ride cabs in the bay area and most indian/afghan cab drivers
around here take one look at me and start playing the latest Indian movie songs.
But, I am not really into new indian movie music.
I might sometimes enjoy some oldies and ghazals. But who‘s asking.
But the wierdest cabbie encounter happened to me a few months ago when I traveled
to Chicago (coincidentally). This guy turned out to be an evangelical cabbie,
a kind I hadn‘t met until then. And he was one rude evangelical cabbie. Halfway
there, he started a casual conversation with me and out of the blue he asked
me:
"Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your life?"
I was a bit dumb founded. So I staggered a bit and said:
"Err…no. What do you mean?"
He said: "Do you believe Jesus is the Christ?"
I said: "I don‘t know. I am not a christian if that is what you are
asking."
He kept blabbering on about this and that and when we reached the hotel
he got a bit agitated and angrily said: "If you don‘t accept Jesus
Christ as your savior you are going to hell!"
Boy, was I glad to get out of his cab or what? No tips for you, nasty cabbie!
He scared the bejesus
out of me!
Life Taxi
May 13th, 2005
Ever find yourself wondering the difference between standards and specifications?
A while ago I was working with one of our customers – T N Subramanian (TN)
Chief Architect at RouteOne. TN first
described to me about how there is this tension between Standards and
Specifications in the industry. Although I do not recall the exact
words he said, I was reminded of it again today after I presented on Pragmatic
SOA to an audience in San Francisco.
Randy
Heffner, VP at Forrester Research,
spoke before me and briefly mentioned and contrasted Standards and Specifications.
I have been meaning to write on this topic for a while, so this brief entry
ought to do it.
The problem is you can find any number of specifications proposed by any number
of people. In the SOA and Web Services space, there are numerous standards and
specifications, many of them competing with each other and this confuses the
heck out of anyone. So as an architect, how do you deal with such an ocean of
standards and specifications?
I think, the key is to remember that a specification in itself is useless without a
community backing and a roadmap for standardization.
I will only incorporate a standard into my implementation roadmap and not just
a specification.
So the next time you look at a specification relevant to you, consider where
it is coming from and where it is going. Unless the specification is submitted
to standardization, it remains just that – a specification. So, as an architect,
you probably do not want to adopt that specification until it becomes an official
standard. Until then though, we can watch and learn.
Software Standards Specifications
May 11th, 2005
One of the things I keep thinking about is how the concept of architecture[1] has evolved in software development over the years. Gone are the days when we (sometimes meticulously) planned, designed and implemented each and every module and sub-system to build a system. And most of the time, using such a long (and waterfall?) life-cycle for development, the thing that we built ended up being close to obsolete when finished. But businesses were not as agile that they were willing to live with such a system. Many businesses bought systems and modified their processes to adapt to the capabilities, pitfalls, drawbacks of a product they bought or built. When businesses adapt to IT, you lose agility and competitive advantage. You want IT to adapt to business requirements so business keeps going at its pace without hindrance from IT. So back then architecture was a rigid concept and a goal, but, today architecture is very fluid adapting to changing business and technical environments. Due the the rapidly changing business and technology scenario, there is no longer a constant architecture to build towards. The architecture has to evolve as we are building the system taking into considerations technology obsolescence, evolving and emerging standards, changing business requirements and everything else that goes with it. Managing architectural quality[2] becomes extremely challenging in this constantly changing[3] environment.
Leaving architectural quality aside for a while, a number of changes in the industry can help us in implementing fuild architectures. On the enterprise software side, that is where Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) comes into play with loosely coupled services helping us build dynamic composite applications leveraging existing and new services. On the infrastructure side, grid computing hopefully fulfils the promise of seamless expansion of unlimited compute power and demand.
These times are challenging, but have never been more interesting. Are you up for it?
[1] The definition of the term Architecture can raise a decent debate among architects and developers, but that is to discuss another day.
[2] Defining Architecture Quality is tricky and sometimes subjective.
[3] Isn‘t that an oxymoron?
Software Architecture SOA Grid
May 6th, 2005
Now, is this innovative or what… a $100 Laptop?? According to MIT Media Lab, this $100 Laptop will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop, with a rear projecting the image on a flat screen or by using electronic ink. Totally cool. I wish I had one when I was a kid. But before you start wanting one, read this:
Please note: these laptops are not in production. They are not—and will not—be available for purchase by individuals.
Check it out. I think its a cool idea.
Technology Life
May 5th, 2005
Previous Posts