Oracle To Add R&D Centers In China 223
stoborrobots writes "Reuters is reporting that the big O is planning to open new R&D centres in china. Initially aiming at the domestic Chinese market, there is potential to resell the technologies developed beyond the borders... Is this the next wave of outsourcing?"
As long as this continues to be the trend... (Score:5, Insightful)
OSS is no longer an ideology, it is fiscal self defense for programmers and IT professionals in general. Open Source allows us to start our own businesses offering support and design services without the middle man of large software companies that will always seek to downsize us to cheaper people.
I'm sure others may disagree, but this is the way I see things.
Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
duh? (Score:1, Insightful)
American companies having been doing this for decades. Those 'Made in China' stickers you always see on American-bought electronics don't lie...
What protection does Oracle have (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a question.....
Re:This isn't just programming, it's R&D (Score:5, Insightful)
As an analogy, IBM's research lab in India is focussed on making eGovernance solutions, machine translation solns from/to Indian languages, Hindi speech reco etc.
Also, it goes without saying that it adds to the overall prestige of Oracle as well.
Who wants a small-town America? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you complain about outsourcing you're merely buying into politician's agendas, effectively giving them an easy platform of "Vote for me and I will protect your jobs". Make great stuff and you don't need protectionism. And if you really value a free market, restrictions should be the last thing on your minds anyway.
The world is a tiny place now, you shouldn't be thinking about "keeping jobs at home" any more than you'd think about extracting all your raw materials from home too. That's not today's world. You can't compete on the basis of labour cost, that should be obvious; you need to be better.
Globalization of both the markets and the production has been immense in recent decades, and no megacorp can afford to chain itself down with yesterday's small-town views nor barriers against free flow of resources.
Re:What protection does Oracle have (Score:3, Insightful)
What protection does Oracle have from Chinese workers stealing their intellectual property and using it in China, or worse, in a Chinese company coming back to compete against Oracle in the States?
I don't know.
What protection does Oracle have from American workers stealing their intellectual property and using it in the US, or worse, in another American country competing against Oracle in the US, if they don't outsource?
Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be so sure. People are surprisingly quick to adopt the cultures of others.
That happens to be one of Radical Islams greatest fears: cultural imperialism. Our ideas about freedom have been called "Murderous Germs".
From an article about the origins of fundamentalist Islam: [newyorker.com]
In his essay "Between Yesterday and Today," Banna [founder of the Muslim Brotherhood] wrote that the colonialist Europeans had expropriated the resources of the Islamic lands and corrupted them with "their murderous germs":
"They imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with
their liquors, their theaters, their dance halls, their amusements, their
stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and
their vices. . . . The day must come when the castles of this materialistic
civilization will be laid low upon the heads of their inhabitants. "
The Brotherhood's slogan was, and remains, "God is our objective; the Koran
is our constitution; the prophet is our leader; struggle is our way; and
death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations."
Or how about Osama's Letter to America [guardian.co.uk]:
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.
(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.
[snip]
(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.
[snip]
Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?
If culture couldn't be outsourced, terrorists would have must less to be angry about.
Oracle is a global company. (Score:5, Insightful)
If my company in New Zealand, or Canada, or wherever, made a billion dollars in the states, and decided it was time to open up a US office,would be out sourcing? Don't be so fucking greedy.
outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
The other myth about "free trade" is that it's all or nothing. You have to let companies import and outsource everything, otherwise you're economy will tank. That has never been the case, and it never will be.
Re:Oracle compete thro' excellence not protectioni (Score:4, Insightful)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You've never used Oracle, have you?
The day that they call for protectionism is the day that they've started resting on their laurels and deserve to die.
They've been resting on their laurels for a long time now. Oh, the core database product is good enough. But the little bits around the edges that make a polished product are just completely absent with Oracle. It comes across as an amateurish and half finished program. And given that they've had 20 years and billions of dollars to get it right, there really is no excuse for that.
Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Rock on! Kind of makes you proud to be a Westerner, doesn't it?
Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Chinese/Far Asians cannot code. There may be a few exeptions. They are good at other things. When you need real developer the salary does not count, skill and time is the factor.
When you leave outsourcing decisions to crappy Asian-hype analysts and business people they will go to China, of course...
As they know so much about the Indian skills... (a cheap waste of money).
"Chinese people as a rule are more homogenous than Indians, and by all anecdotal evidence are much more disciplined."
haha. Chinese are not homogenous at all, although they look the same to "us". And discipline does not count, it's only important that they do what you want them to do.
"by all anecdotal evidence are much more disciplined."
-- by anecdotal evidence
When you leave it to rational businessmen and developers you will outsource to Eastern Europe or The Baltics. They are skilled, talented developers, and their salary is cheap. The infrastructure is there and you can easily administer it from Western Europe.
"India is a democratic republic,
Your assumption is that businesses don't like dictatorships. This is true. The problem is that in a non-demcratic government where freedom of individuals is not respected also freedom of business is not respected. And as everybody knows a totalitarian government is so inefficient, because there is a lack of checks and balances.
Would you like fries with that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dell operates on the same model as McDonald's. They do a little QC on the cheapest crap they can get their hands on and advertise. Most people, it seems, have been happy eating "downer cows" [mcdonalds.com]. That and an economy built on pure service might be good enough for you, but I want the freedom to do more.
If you complain about outsourcing you're merely buying into politician's agendas ... Make great stuff and you don't need protectionism. And if you really value a free market, restrictions should be the last thing on your minds anyway.
No, I don't buy it and yes I demand free markets.
The real protectionism is in "IP" laws. Restrictive licensing prevents people from actually rating Oracle's databases so comparison is impossible. Worse, I can't compete against Oracle if they get a bunch of bogus software patents. It is only that kind of government protection that makes the logistic headaches of outsourcing possible. In a free economy, most of the current big dumb companies would have been toppled by smaller smarter competition long ago.
As it is, the big dumb companies survive and feed off each other. The average American worker continues to suffer M$ desktops, mergers and layoffs while their overpaid executives pad their salaries with bonuses from all the money they have "saved" by eliminating their competition, auction proceeds and offshoring. The whole thing is a crock and represents the end of a long corporate looting spree.
The "service" economy was a lie. The US will quickly become a backwater if it fails to make things other people want. Some people were dumb enough to think that we could simply provide the world with "brains". The definition of "brains" is swiftly being reduced to ownership of ideas that citizens of other countries are increasingly having.
The ownership strategy is ultimately bankrupt. It amounts to enslavement of the rest of the world, a very unAmerican idea to begin with. It's also impractical. Our ability to level ownership taxes will die as other countries inherit and improve our former technical excellence.
The hogs running US mega corp and the US government could care less. They are getting theirs while the rest of us are getting the shaft.
Re:Who wants a small-town America? (Score:1, Insightful)
While I agree, I would argue that this is a normal way of advancing economies. We've been in this situation (slave wages, people are nothing more than labour) here in Belgium too. But, as time went by, revolutions came, people stood up for their rights, unions formed, and the people became stronger.
Surpressing people and paying low wages is not a good thing, but forcing them to follow our rules isn't a good thing either (look at what happened in some African countries where we wanted to dictate our right way of doing things). We should give them a chance, let them fight for their rights (one way or another, I don't like dead people too, but I hope you can see where I'm going with this) and let them develop their own solution. Who knows, maybe a new market form might come out of all this. There are multiple solutions/approaches to a problem. Our solution is not the one (otherwise the free market economy would have stayed as it is since it's conception. And we all know it has since been adapted to the public needs et al.)
About the sweat shop thing, closing the shop might be quite an unethical way of doing things, but the shop brought welfare to the region, allowing people to get educated and collect know-how. They are schooled, so if there are only some people who would take initiative, schooled workers are already there. As opposed to people staying uneducated and not "advancing". An educated person is, to me, better of than an uneducated one.
It's not a black and white world, and there is a reason that ethics is a course thought in economics courses at the universities here in Belgium
Re:Simple Question, Simple Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Tea. Porcelain dinnerware. The oxblood and hunter green drawing room. Lacquerware. Sofas.
All elements of classic British culture.
All Chinese.
And for those about to point out the negative aspect of such tranference of Chinese culture to Europe in the form of opium, I'm afraid that that culture is Greco-Roman and came to China in exchange for tea.
The fact, however, that opium is now so firmly embedded in the Western mind as a distinct aspect of Chinese culture only bolsters the argument that culture can be outsourced.
KFG
Re:definition of offshore out sourcing. (Score:3, Insightful)
That is the _only_ definition.
You can rant all you like about IP, protectionism, and off shore jobs, but it still doesn't change the fact that opening a branch in another country is _not_ offshore outsourcing. Even if you do fire everyone in the original country.
You might well call it off-shoring - Though I would call it relocating - but you most certainly can not call it off shore outsourcing.
Some facts people need to learn (this portion is not necesarily a reply to twitter's post).
Outsourcing does not imply off-shoring.
Employing people in other countries is not outsourcing.
Outsourcing is not evil.
Offshore outsourcing is not evil.
Outsourcing (whether or not it's offshore) can sometimes be beneficial, but only if you're outsourcing a complicated, time or resource consuming process that is not your core business to a company that specialises in it.
Outsourcing can also cause problems - it adds extra red tape and process when you want to make changes, and if you've outsourced to an off shore company, then timezones and langauge add to that problem.
Outsourcing your core business is almost always a bad idea - there's no way you can possibly offer a service that competes on both price and features if you're reselling someone else's service. It logically follows that another company could just perform that service without the extra layer, and be able to adapt faster than you, and be more flexible on pricing.
But outsourcing in general is not a bad thing, and is something that should be allowed to continue, even off shore outsourcing.
By the way - the bit about the US not getting UK music is more of a problem for the US then anything else. Sure, the UK acts are missing out on the larger market, but the US audiences are missing out on good music, and the resulting cutural variety.
Musicians can do quite very well for themselves never having been in the USA - we don't need you.
There are an awful lot of Australian acts over the years that have been extremely successful by only being popular in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
However, that has nothing whatsoever to do with outsourcing, off shoring or off shore outsourcing.
BOGUS, "their feet won't reach the pedals" (Score:2, Insightful)
all interesting facts, all (probably?) true, and all beside the point.
None of those facts matter to the people who make the outsourcing decisions. Price DOES matter.
Proof: all of your observed "advantages" of India (over China) are even more applicable to the locally-based programmers whose jobs are being outsourced. But those advantages haven't prevented their jobs being lost to the lowest bidder.
Furthermore, I'm not even sure that you're right about the Indian culture making for better programmers:
-- who invented gunpowder?
-- which of those two countries was the first to acquire nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, etc.?
-- which of those two **ethnic** groups has shown greater success in technology? (hint: think Taiwan)
-- and finally, what difference does language etc. make, when labor is so cheap that you can outsource virtually the entire I.T. department?
This entire "culture" thesis reminds me of how some WWII Americans said that Japanese would be inferior fighter pilots -- because their feet wouldn't reach the pedals.
Re:Workaround for US export controls? (Score:2, Insightful)
BTW imagine what happens when Oracle becomes considered an almost-local company in China. It's going to be a great politically correct source of commercial software and profit for everyone involved (no commercial software => low selling price => no money for "consulting" payouts => bad business)...
Therefore mySQL and J2EE support contracts are going to remain a tough sell.
Re:outsourcing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Workaround for US export controls? (Score:2, Insightful)