A Jamaican entrepreneur/friend in Atlanta, Sheldon Mundle, brought an interesting study to my attention last week. A study by Brown-Wilson Group called the Black Book of Outsourcing was recently released and this particular one was titled “2009: The Year of Outsourcing Dangerously”. This study sought “to rank each metropolitan hub of outsourcing, as similar concerns are shared when assessing the safety and security of outsourced operations.”
Kingston, Jamaica was ranked as the 5th riskiest city for IT outsourcing, only ranking above Bogota, Bangkok, Johannesburg, and Kuala Lumpur. No other Caribbean city was mentioned on the list of the
worst 25 but it was not clear if other Caribbean cities were included in the study since I have only been able to see the top 25 and bottom 25.
It should also be noted that India, well-known as an outsourcing destination, has 8 cities in the riskiest 25.
I made sure to take a look at the document to understand why Kingston was ranked so low, what improvements were necessary and which cities were best in class in each of the ten (10) areas used to arrive at the final rankings.
Kingston was in the top 3 for 3 risk areas: Legal System Immaturity, Unsecured and Unprotected Networks, Infrastructure, Technology and Telephone and Weather/Climate Threats/Hazards (ranked first). The climate is not something we can change but more probably needs to be done to show the ability of our infrastructure to handle the hurricanes that come our way.
Unsecured and unprotected networks is clearly a major issue in regards to IT and we need to learn from the best in class cities:Toronto/Montreal, Singapore and Dublin. It is interesting that these are also the top 3 cities for ‘Legal System maturity’. If any city in the Caribbean truly wants to compete for IT outsourcing business, much has to be learned from these 3 cities.
Read the full document here -
http://www.theblackbookofoutsourcing.com/docs/2009%20Year%20of%20Outsourcing%20Dangerously.pdf
Jamaica has the perfect opportunity to rebound off this image but it will take a concentrated strategy with investors, vendors and government officials.
The key points we got from The Black Book of Outsourcing study were in the perceived risk by offshore investors in the inability of Caribbean cities to mitigate risk - but more importantly - how to recover after an incident.
We can’t escape the weather but we can demonstrate that we can recover without business interruptions when a will hurricane hit, for instance. This includes protected or rerouted infrastructures, hurricane-resistant structures, employee transportation to work locations, back up data and re-routing, and government agencies that are responsive to the business centers.
If we can demonstrate these risk mitigation efforts -we will shed the status of being so risky from the climate because we are in a most desirable location for Americans in terms of accessibility, time zone, cultures, language etc.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
interesting … any idea of how many IT Outsourcing jobs exist in Kingston.
would also love to know also where(if) montego bay is in the black book
March 22nd, 2009 at 8:35 am
I have no idea and the data that I can find only focuses on call centre staff numbers.
Montego Bay was not on the list at all, indicating that the report is not focused on call centre outsourcing operations but more the programming aspect.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
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March 31st, 2009 at 4:18 pm