Saturday, May 22, 2010

Microsoft Software - Is It Too Hard For Microsoft?

Oh, the wry smile this brought to my face was a sight to behold!  ;)

Microsoft, it seems, finds it too hard to manage the deployment of their own operating systems and applications and are outsourcing this to an Indian outsourcing company, Infosys, for the next 3 years.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

6 comments:

Matthew Corr said...

huh? Where did you read this?

Also how hard is it for Microsoft to just look at what Apple OS X is doing and copy it?

Hilton Travis said...

G'day Matthew,

Well, the first I heard about this was back in mid 2003 when it was reported that Microsoft was relocating its customer support from Texas and North Carolina to India.

Then around mid 2004 there were some documents that were released about a 3 year old arrangement that was in place, so this probably started in 2001 - maybe before.

And according to this post (http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-outsourcing-internal-it-services-to-india), Infosys now has a 3 year contract to manage Microsoft's internal systems.

And as to Apple, well, Microsoft is soooooo much bigger a company than Apple that you can't really compare anything much as far as development nor even IT support goes. Microsoft has so many more products in so many more areas that Apple doesn't, looking at OSX won't show Microsoft much at all, really.

Alan said...

Like i said before... it not a question of how hard... its a question of cost... Its just plain facts that Labor in India is cheaper and a lot of IT work can be done remotley... Microsoft is a business and if they can reduce cost then by outsourcing day to day tasks then then they can...

Hilton Travis said...

*IS* it a question of being too hard to support at a reasonable codt, though? If the costs were reasonable, then they wouldn't need to outsource their own internal IT support.

And it seems you missed the point that Infosys are working with Unisys to provide onsite support - so Microsoft, a US_based company is outsourcing their think work to Infosys in India who are outsourcing the physical work to Unisys in the US, yet Microsoft can't support their own IT at a reasonable cost!

Alan said...

AHH!!!... You are talking about an iceberg... There is always going to need to be a presence on site to fix the physical hardware issues (hence the Unisys deal)... this is the most visiable part of the support but it is by no means a largest part...

When you take into account the support cost for servers OS installs, workstation software... call centre... SOE development... etc etc... the vast majority of the support team is not user facing and hence can be outsourced to locations where labour is cheaper... hence this move..

While have excellent tools at managing very large organisations... there is still a lot of work to do when you look after 100,000 workstations...

Certainly Microsoft tools (e.g. AD, Group Policy, SCCM etc) making supporting their environemnet much more effeciently.... It's just it is cheaper still its just even cheaper if they move it off shore..

Hilton Travis said...

I'm not making excuses for them and if you're not employed there, I don't know why you are either! I'm sure those ex employees that now are looking for work because Steve Ballmer decided to save a buck at these people's jobs aren't too happy about the decision either.

Capatilism is fine, but walking over people with the sole aim of making a buck isn't fair on anyone.