Piracy, Pirates and Offshore Techies

During the past few weeks, one couldn’t glance through the international headlines without reading about the saga of Piracy unfolding in the Gulf of Aden and at high-seas. To those of us in the software IT services business, another version of this scourge continues to impact us: software piracy. 

Given that Piracy is noteworthy and the pirates at sea are operate offshore, I am surprised that some smart alec writer or blogger hasn’t picked up on offshoring piracy. It is probably because large software services firms, Infosys included, take Intellectual property rights seriously. Most have strong policies and guidelines preventing employees, consultants and service providers from indulging in such acts and violations are not tolerated.

The numbers in terms of dollars lost to software piracy are hugh. For instance, this article talks about how “Software ranks among the most popular categories of counterfeited goods, and the Internet is only contributing to the rise in intellectual property violations, according to research by a piracy-prevention consultancy .  .   . During the month of June 2005, $91 million worth of entertainment media and software was pirated worldwide, up 13 per cent from December 2004, according to research from Canada's Gieschen Consultancy.”

Though companies discourage the practice by strong enforcement within their environments, software piracy continues. Pervasiveness of wi-fi and broadband has made piracy a cottage industry. Many of us may support or actively participate in piracy without even blinking. Here is a dipstick: Do you feel guilty about making copies of the latest music hit that your friend bought? (or the other way around) While doing so, you may not feel as sinister as a gang of Somalis taking the captain of Mersk Alabama hostage, it is still about the owner of the “rights” not getting their due share. Which makes one wonder if there such a thing as Harmless piracy?

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Last blog post on Managing Offshore IT

This week, I got an email from our anchor at the corporate blog team that read

Hi Mohan
You’ve not been writing on the MOIT blog, wanted to check with you if you plan to write or I should get the blog archived.
Thanks/Rahil

Reading the note, I realized how long it had been since I posted on this blog; I obviously had a decision to make: should I get this blog archived or should I get back to continually posting here?

It has been nearly three years since I started penning my thoughts in my avatar of a corporate blogger. My corporate blogging odyssey began when a friend and colleague, Vijay TSR, who was then heading the internet strategy of our corporate marketing team, prompted me to join the bandwagon. He helped define the framework for Infosys’ corporate blogs and had the back-office operations enabled and got me started. Looking back, Infosys’ corporate blog was among the first wave of serious corporate blogging attempts by Indian IT majors.

I began sharing my views and viewpoints on technology management, consulting along with anecdotes and practical case studies. During the time, I also exposed readers to some of my personal issues and challenges. I am thankful for the following, ideation and commentary my blog generated from readers online and offline.

Trying to get myself to post a “last blog”  has not been easy. This effort reminded me of the memorable "last lecture" by Randy Pausch (A Beloved Professor Delivers The Lecture of a Lifetime).

This past week I have also been musing: Has the world of offshoring and offshore outsourcing changed a lot in the past three years?

Yes and No.

Yes, if you consider the fact that sourcing deals large and small periodically continue to be inked. And yes, if you count the occasional mergers, buyouts and other consolidation either at client end or of sourcing firms. The occasional blunders and even rarer (but catastrophic) corporate scandals leading to a lot of soul searching and finger pointing.
I would also think that No, the world of offshoring hasn’t transformed radically in the past few years: Last I checked, the business models are still about adding people offshore/ nearshore/ anyshore to do the same/similar work that would have otherwise been done onsite by the client or at a client location. If anything, the models have only been maturing as the people in the industry mature.  I guess at this point the business of sourcing and offshoring is more about gradual evolution than revolution. 

This is not to say that newer technology paradigms and automation in software development and delivery in horizon couldn’t lead to drastic changes. 

Before I signoff, a special vote of thanks to Vijay TSR, Rahil Arora and Infosys’ Corporate Marketing team for the excellent architecture and support of our corporate blogs and platform that enables road-warriors and global employees like self to just muse and post.

May the Force be with you

- Mohan (Linkedin)

Ps: I will continue to express my two cents on globalisation on my personal blog (Globalization and Me), and sporadically add to discussions on Infosys’ Enterprise Architecture blog.

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