Certification - June 2008 - (Page 38)

Perot Systems. These workers are guaranteed a job for a year, and Jewish Hospital decided to keep seven workers on staff to perform its higher-end IT planning and analysis. This is considered an IT outsourcing success story because the work went to a U.S.-based company and no U.S. jobs were lost. The overall concern is how much work will eventually wind up overseas. “Estimates of the number of service jobs potentially at risk, by economists and research organizations, range widely from a few million to more than 40 million, which is about a third of the total employment in services,” said a July 2007 New York Times report. A company that can provide both technical support and a business process will be ahead of the game. According to an April 2005 article in the Houston Business Journal, “By combining the two cost-saving strategies of IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing, companies of all sizes can realize improvements in both the bottom line and in a synergistic relationship between the technology users and technology providers — whether inside or outside the company.” The benefits of providing both give a company a competitive advantage over others. We can’t start in the middle, missing the help-desk experience that every seasoned IT pro has under his or her belt. It was a rite of passage for most of us: Get an entry-level helpdesk job, get certification or two and move up in the organization to bigger and better roles. are definite advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing. Many take a negative view that it takes jobs away from U.S. workers. Others see outsourcing as an opportunity for growth and a positive impact on their businesses. 8 Patrick D. Turner is president of Little Pond Consulting LLC. He can be reached at editor@certmag.com. To try and combat the offshoring problem, IBM is focusing on shifting technology services to become more couched in business knowledge than software technology. By positioning itself as a higher-end outsource corporation, it is able to retain many of its clients and prevent them from going overseas to get a better price. So what will become of the great outsourcing dilemma that many companies in the U.S. face every day? There 38 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE June 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification - June 2008

Certification - June 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Online Degrees: Are They Right for You? Inside Certification New Opportunities and Challenges: Are Application Developers Ready? Interface Where Have All the Help Desks Gone? Ad Index Endtag

Certification - June 2008

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