'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