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I don't tend to stray too much from Java performance here, but every once in a while something that I feel strongly about compels me to write outside the performance topic. And Javva The Hutt's column this month on outsourcing has done just that. Because my experience is that the outsourcing decisions that I'm seeing at the moment are incompetent. I don't mean wrong, or not cost effective or any of a number of descriptions that are raised partly by worries about jobs being lost by encumbent workers. It's an open market place, and if someone can do the job more cheaply to the same quality, then you'd better be prepared for that (specialization would be my advice).
I mean that there are outsourcing decisions that are going to result in company officers being sued because they are negligent decisions - targeting cost savings without thinking through the damage they may be doing to the business. Let me explain. Managing the information and business processes of your company is a core of your business. Our industry is called "Information Technology" for a reason - because we manage the business information. It's why the I.T. budget is always going up - I.T. is a core part of any knowledge based business. But I.T. covers parts of the business that aren't core too - box management, OS support, document workflow support, many things like that.
It's crystal clear that you can outsource the non-core I.T. parts of your business and save money without losing anything essential from the business. Resetting passwords, re-configuring your machine, installing applications, etc. These make perfect sense to outsource.
Now I'm hearing about decisions made to outsource support of I.T. systems that are an essential part of the business advantage. But Knowledge based businesses that outsource their core knowledge are basically paying to set up new or better competition. And when, in a few years, businesses are losing to competitors that they basically funded and trained, some shareholders are going to realise that the decisions made now are the reason their investments are going down the pan. And they will sue the company officers for negligence - because if you are keeping the company gold in an unlocked cabinet to save the cost of a vault, you have made a negligent decision and sooner or later you'll pay the price for that.
Now on with the newsletter. We have our usual lists of Java performance tools, news, and articles. Kirk tells us about the performance sessions at JavaOne, and as I mentioned earlier, Javva The Hutt tells us about his experience of outsourcers asking for help. And finally, as usual, we have extracted tips from all of this month's referenced articles.
Java performance tuning related news.
Java performance tuning related tools.
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