IT E-Strategies: Research Highlights
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Greetings,
I'd like to explain my "hiatus" over the past few months. First, I have spent most of the past couple/few months in China, with a professional focus on offshore systems integration outsourcing opportunities. One thing I have noticed is that a lot of IT advisory services (and as you may recall, I'm a former VP with the META Group) tend to have limited knowledge of the explosive growth in outsourcing in India. However, when it comes to China, the IT advisory services are totally clueless. I suspect that the so-called industry "gurus" can't name even one homegrown Chinese SI! They tend to have a Chicken Little and "it is better to sit on your hands" attitude. This shows a phenomenal (if not downright stupendous) amount of ignorance. There are potential pitfalls, to be sure, but as labor rates rise in India, China is THE place to look for outsourcing options. For more on this, keep an eye out for an article on this topic by yours truly to appear in AlwaysOn.
I was also assisting as the acting VP of Corporate Development for a start-up called EXEC.CC. Think of LinkedIn + Salesforce.com + WebEx. (Not exactly, but close.) Rather than an approach limited to social/professional networking, EXEC.CC took this idea two steps further to include contact management and collaboration tools. Unfortunately, the initial response from the venture community was that we are about six months too late.
Finally, I was trying to put something together with Rob Enderle, the best known industry analyst in Silicon Valley. Rob was my counterpart at Giga and left shortly after Giga's acquisition by Forrester. Anyway, we decided that our markets are a wee bit too different, with the only potential for cooperation in the wireless/pervasive/mobile space.
So this is what I have been up to. I will get back on a regular publishing schedule for this blog in May, but I plan to publish most of my feature length articles also on AlwaysOn (and I have several in the works).
Pax,
David Scott Lewis
mailto:editor@itestrategies.com
