Stop reading this and get back to work, you whiner! Well, Spencer knows you may not be a whiner, but he has it on good authority that many of your IT compadres are.
Thats because the fact-filching Feline heard it in so many words at a recent Mass eComm Leadership Roundtable on outsourcing in Boston. EMC CIO Dave Ellard claimed that the U.S. IT work force isnt losing jobs to offshore outsourcing—rather, workers are being “shifted” into other, more interesting jobs. For this benevolence, Ellard said an outsourcer should get a percentage of the savings for each salary subtracted.
During the Q&A, one of Spencers fellow reporters asked Ellard exactly what types of jobs people are shifting into after their tedious tasks are terminated. “I dont know,” Ellard replied defensively. “I dont follow these numbers.” Then the CIO ranted on that people should go out and learn new skills and stop sitting around whining about losing their jobs.
Always egalitarian in his emotions, Le Chat meowed to his neighbor, “Out of gratitude, je pense EMC employees would gladly chip in for an incentive check to outsource Mr. Ellard.”
When Spencer got back to the newsroom, he swung by the legal desk and noticed that CMS Technologies, an eight-person company based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is filing a lawsuit against Cisco. CMS has been working with IEEE members to implement a standard license on its patented portions of a technology originally developed to carry 100M-bps FDDI signals over twisted-pair copper wiring. CMS claims the technology is being used in the IEEE 802.3af standardization effort for power over Ethernet. It seems that Cisco has refused to get on board, claiming that the technology had been publicly demonstrated a year before CMS patent was initiated, leaving CMS to seek satisfaction in the courts.
Speaking of satisfaction, it appears that Siebel Systems customers may not be getting any. Siebel held a Web conference to respond to reports of an internal document indicating Siebel customers were not satisfied with the company. The document, leaked to financial traders, supposedly included eight pages of a report by Satmetrix on Siebel customer dissatisfaction. A company official riffled through the negative pages so quickly that they were unreadable. Afterward, another rep pored over more than 30 slides of odd graphics proclaiming how satisfied Siebel customers really are. “Maybe Siebel should take a cue from Dave Ellard and outsource its PR work,” quipped the Qatt. “I hear former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is available. Now theres a guy that can stay on message.”
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