'Outsourcing is a long-term trend, bet on it'

This was Charlie Feld, Executive VP (Portfolio Management), EDS addressing a
packed audience of 800 plus delegates at TUCON 2006, Tibco Software's annual
user conference at Orlando's Omni Resort.

In his keynote address, Feld held forth on the future roadmap of technology.
Coming out in support of increasing outsourcing by corporations, he said,
“Half of what we do inside a firm today will be outsourced or eliminated
within 20 years. This will include 50% of blue collar roles, 80% of clerical
roles and 20% of professional roles.” In fact, he felt that globalization will
accelerate: “Where, how, when and by whom the work gets done is shifting.”

Talking about the changing role of CIOs, Feld said that the 21st century CIO
has an obligation to “set agenda, build a great team and deliver on a
consistent basis.” He advised all the global 2000 corporations to make a
journey-“Back to the Future”. His prescription for them: well-run
businesses require well-run IT execution.

Taking off from Feld was Scott Adams, creator of the famed Dilbert comic
strip. In his plain, down to earth manner, Adams tried to make the audience
understand the connection between the day-to-day working of corporations with
the daily strip of Dilbert, which appears in more than 2,000 publications
worldwide. Liberally illustrating his address with Dilbert strips, he said,
“Dilbert is all around us.”

Earlier in his inaugural address, Vivek Ranadive, Chairman & CEO, Tibco
Software, brought the house down when he started his speech saying, “I have a
lot of similarities with Dilbert.” Then on a more serious note, he went about
espousing the cause of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), which Tibco is
so passionate about. Bashing companies like IBM and Oracle, he said, “Database
Oriented Architecture is an architecture for extortion. There is a sea change
occurring. Now it is the era of SOA.”

In fact, he was very vocal about IBM and its actions. Taking off on the likes
of Oracle's Larry Ellison who does not let go of any opportunity to indulge in
his bout of Microsoft bashing, Ranadive also did not mince words when it came to
IBM. Some of his choicest gems: “IBM is very good at copying. IBM is not the
sacred cow it used to be. CIOs would now prefer not to work with IBM. We are
more stable than IBM in terms of balance sheets.”

TUCON 2006 is the annual user conference of the $446 mn Palo Alto-based Tibco
Software Inc, a business integration and process management software company
that enables real time business. The theme of this two-day conference, 'Learn,
Engage and Leverage' was designed to facilitate attendees to collaborate with
an extensive network of Tibco experts, partners, peers and industry leaders. The
basic idea was to deliver on their real-time vision and deepen their practical
knowledge of Business Process Management (BPM), business optimization and SOA.

Asim Raina (CyberMedia News)

The author was hosted by Tibco to Orlando