[OT] On Shoring !

[John A. Bailo]

This is an article about a company I work with. I thought it funny
after years of us developers having "off shoring" rubbed in our noses:


MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 3, 2006--KANA Software, Inc.
(Pink Sheets:KANA - News), a leading provider of Service Resolution
Management (SRM) solutions, today announced that it is *backsourcing*
core software development and restructuring its research and development
organization. Over the last several years, core product development has
been done in Asia and multiple U.S. locations. KANA will consolidate its
R&D operations into one location at the company's headquarters in Menlo
Park, California.


http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060103/20060103005177.html?.v=1

 

[John Timney \( MVP \)]

If only " increased customer satisfaction " was a serious initial
consideration in many companies misguided decsions to offshore in the first
place things like this would not even make the headlines. Sadly, its an
afterthought, and usually too late as offshoring has occured, and customers
quickly lose faith in poor service that often results from it.

 

[John A. Bailo]

I totally agree.

I think it's what Steve Ballmer meant when he said people are not paying
for the true value of software.

Trained professionals, aware not only of how to write components, but
how to build transactional information systems (TIS) are way undervalued
in terms of the service they provide.

The idea of simply shoveling work to poor quality shops -- or to rely on
snake oil "application servers" is ridiculous; the value is in good
quality software /engineers/.

For example, just yesterday I spent 4 hours training a user in how to
construct "business rules" that were supposedly easy to write on a
soup-to-nuts application server. I kept thinking: I could write a case
statement in c# in five minutes that would solve the issue.