According to a 3/1/06 article by John Ribeiro, India's Satyam Computer Services will expand its outsourcing presence in China. Satyam currently employs 270, mainly in its Shanghai office, but the new site will be in Guangzhou and will focus on the southern China market. http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/03/01/75979_HNsatyamexpands_1.html

In an engagingly well-written article about the impact of rural sourcing on Lebanon, Virginia (pop. 3,300), the Christian Science Monitor's Patrik Jonsson paints a word picture of the town and some of the people who live in this mid-Appalachian plateau community where the average household income is about $27,000.

It's not hard to imagine the excitement generated by the news, announced late last year, that CGI-AMS and Northrop-Grumman were bringing 700+ technology jobs to Lebanon - and with salaries of around $50,000 a year. Jonsson quotes one of the town's high school students as saying that "It's nice to know that I might be able to stay here and raise a family, instead of having to go somewhere else to do that."

Even non-subscribers of the respected international daily should be able to read the article free for another few days at http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0223/p02s01-usec.html

Wikipedia entry on Lebanon (including its location on a Virginia map): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon,_Virginia

Yesterday (2/20/06), Everett Johnson, President of IT Governance Institute, Deloitte & Touche, gave a fantasic Microsoft Executive Circle webcast on IT governance. (You should be able to register to listen to or watch a replay at
http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032290261%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e, but if that doesn't work, just find it at http://www.microsoft.com/webcasts.)

Johnson, a CPA, is a retired partner with Deloitte & Touche where he served as director for the company’s computer assurance service and its enterprise risk services practice. He has more than 40 years of experience in audit, control, and security and currently serves as president of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) and the IT Governance Institute (ITGI).

During his presentation (worth the replay), Mr. Johnson explained that IT governance has five components: strategic alignment, value delivery, resource management, risk management, and performance management. He also provided URLs to several useful resources, including these:

• Control Objectives for Information and related Technology
  http://www.isaca.org/Template.cfm?Section=COBIT6&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=55&ContentID=7981
• http://www.isaca.org/Template.cfm?Section=COBIT6&CONTENTID=23377&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
• 74-page 2nd Edition of a "Board Briefing on IT Governance" booklet.
  http://www.itgi.org/Template_ITGI.cfm?Section=Recent_Publications&CONTENTID=15994&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm

During the Q&A session, I asked him several questions related to outsourcing. How can outsourced operations be integrated into an organization's IT governance? In general, are any of the leading Indian outsourcing firms (Tata, Infosys, for example) ramping up both on their own IT governance as well as IT governance performed on behalf of their clients? Also, does CMMI cover IT governance?

His reply was that, ideally, these details should be specified in the contract. He admitted, though, that they rarely are. Often, he said, there's just an audit clause.

He also noted that, based on his organization's forthcoming survey, it's usually organizations that have healthy, well-run IT shops that are most likely to outsource some of their tasks. You can't outsource problems effectively, he observed.

Bottom line message for anyone considering outsourcing (my take on Mr. Johnson's presentation): Think about your organization's IT governance and try to weave it into service provider contract - and partnership.

eWEEK's Executive Editor Stan Gibson offers an excellent podcast overview of last week's (Feb 15-17) NASSCOM 2006 summit in Mumbai.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1871476,00.asp

(Select eWEEK podcast #25 for NASSCOM coverage, #20, #22, and #24 for additional coverage of Gibson's trip to India)

Separately, NASSCOM, http://www.nasscom.org/, announced the winners of its Global Leadership awards for 2006:

• Business Leadership: British Telecom CEO Ben Verwaayen
• Innovation: eBay President & CEO Meg Whitman
• IT User: ABN Amro
• Thought Leader: The New York Times Columnist Thomas L Friedman
• Global Indian: Norwest
• Ventures Partners Managing Partner Promod Haque

In the first of a two-part article on "Best Practices for Improving Project Success: The Importance of Synchronization," Goran Begic focuses on face-to-face communication and use cases.

Although he starts his discussion of communication by observing "Blessed are the teams that reside in a single location...", Goran does provide some good practical advice for communication in a distributed environment such as implementing a project home page and a good defect-tracking system. He also recommends online chat.
http://websphere.sys-con.com/read/173071.htm