Markets were mixed and downish Tuesday, but there was some good news to be found.

Housing starts and building permits soared, causing a big pop in shares to battered homebuilders. Whether this is a false start or a real jump, its hard to get anything but good news out of a housing market so beaten down.

On the industrial side, the Produce Price Index remained relatively stable, walking the narrow path between two evils -- deflation and inflation.

Continue reading Green Shoots Scenario: Onshoreable jobs

Green Shoots Scenario: Onshoreable jobs originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Satyam Computer Services (NYSE: SAY) stock has not opened for U.S. trading in days -- and if it did it would be down 91%. As I posted, its CEO announced that Satyam's financial statements were fraudulent and that means that its clients and 53,000 employees are up for grabs. In a world of shrinking budgets, Satyam's competitors ought to be eagerly feeding on the flesh of this crippled company.

Which competitors are likely to pick up the slack? Both Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and and International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) are best positioned to feed on Satyam's corpse. And with the $50 billion a year market for offshoring experienced a growth slowdown from 29% in 2008 to 10% in 2009 -- those Satyam clients could help plug the growth gap,

There are three reasons why Accenture and IBM should gain:

• They each already supply most of Satyam's blue-chip corporate clients;
• They each have built up their Indian operations in recent years, so they offer Satyam customers the same skills at competitive prices; and
• They are not Indian companies and therefore are not under the same corporate governance cloud that Satyam's revelations spread to all of India's outsourcers.

It may not be too late to invest in Accenture -- which is much more focused on consulting -- to take advantage of this possibility. In the case of IBM, the pickings from Satyam may not be big enough to move its stock.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College. His eighth book is You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Will Accenture and IBM pick up Satyam's slack? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

With the dollar so low, why not outsource to America? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Word continues to come through the financial news wire that major software and Internet companies are rapidly expanding their outsource business information storage and processing systems. It's obvious to me that this is one of the focus intents of Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) expansion in data centers. More companies are opting for outside warehousing of data storage and processing. More office desks are becoming populated with networked "dumb" terminals in place of the networked PC.

I myself utilize more than one outside source for the storage of data. Photobucket hosts a selection of my digital images as backup and I have text data backups in a few key places. For me the practice is limited to the storage of duplicate copies of non-proprietary information but for many it's becoming an essential part of business as usual.

The worldwide market for data storage and processing services is predicted to reach nearly $20 billion by 2011. I think that's a conservative estimate. I'm of the belief that the proposition is to become much more than just online file cabinets. Companies such as Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) can typically assist in reducing business data storage costs by as much as 12% and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Outside data handling frees up in house resources making them available for increased productivity and improved performance capabilities. In the very near future, the nature of in house data systems will begin to be looked at from a much more streamlined perspective.

Online data storage is all the rage originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 16 May 2007 15:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple wilted in the Indian sun. Or maybe CEO Steve Jobs didn't like the commute. Either way, after hiring 30 employees to provide software development and support from Bangalore, India, with plans to hire 600 by year's end, Apple suddenly fired them all. This announcement came shortly after a planned visit from Jobs was cancelled.

With no explanation other than that Apple was "re-evaluating" its operations, Bangalore is left agape at the sudden reversal, only a month after most employees were hired. Apple is keeping its 25-employee sales and marketing operation in the Indian city open.

Jacqui Cheng from Infinite Loop rejects cost as a concern when she wonders about the rationale behind the sudden shift in strategy. Was it "because of all the poor PR it had received after the news originally spread that there was now going to be a very good chance that when we called support, we'd actually be talking to one of our homies over in India?" If it's PR, the company is certainly paying a high price for customer goodwill.

Apple's Indian vacation cut short originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 05 Jun 2006 13:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.