Hi All,
Apologies for not posting this post earlier, it was lying in my drafts and i never noticed that it was’nt published ..until now
Well, here are the list of useful command line scripts for deploying BTS 2006 Applications, Artifacts and more:
AddApp Command – Add a BizTalk Application to the BizTalk Management DB.
AddResource Command […]
A while ago I posted about a podcast I heard with MS’s Harry Pierson, titled “Developer 2.0”. This podcast talked about the outsourcing of IT skilled labour into developing countries like India, where labour is much cheaper, and concluded/proposed that the kind of jobs that won’t be outsourced include the ones in architecture. But there’s a lot happening in this area.
A known analyst, Cringely, recently wrote in his blog about a supposed reduction of ~150k IT workers at IBM Global Services, to be replaced by workers in BRIC (Brasil Russia India and China) and this post spurred over 1000 comments, by IBMer’s, former IBM’rs, people working in IT, people calling for sindicates, nationalists, people in developing countries, etc. I read through the part of the sequence of comments, and found it immensely interesting, a true management lesson. It’s true, that skilled IT work is being outsourced to these countries, and everybody in IT should be aware of this and consider the options.
Some of the comments I found most interesting talked about a decrease of interest in Computer Science or Engineering at universities. I have heard people complain more than once, in *Portugal*, that working as a developer can be underpaid work (600/mo, for example), so I wouldn’t be surprised if this also happens here. Other people complain that IT is too hard, requiring lots of work and skills in Math. Here’s an article on this subject. Apparently, in the UK, there’s “a 43 per cent drop in those studying computer science at A-Level between 2001 and 2006.”
Another argument I found interesting was about Intelectual Property and Innovation: if the work and skills are being outsourced for cheaper labour, won’t those same workers/countries eventually take the lead in technological innovation, R&D, and creativity, especially as their own markets expand? Someone said: “As the companies in India and China do more of the work functions there will be a day when they determine that they can cut much of their overhead by cutting the link to their foriegn management team.” Other comment about innovation was: “Upgrades tend to get pushed back as staffs become leaner. In most outsourcing contracts, outsourcers are required to keep you on currently supported levels.”
Also interesting were some of the comments from people in India, in part in response to the complaints that their work lacks quality, especially in customer support: “The US counterparts assign only that work to us which they would not like to do. […] It is very unfair of you people to blame our communication skills.We unlike you not only have to learn english but also the local provincial language(kannada in my case),the so called “national” language hindi, the language spoken at home (tamil in my case). […] A beautiful and peaceful city like Bangalore which was called the garden city has turned into a garbage city.You will get to see the worst traffic in the world here. […] There is huge disparity of incomes between those in IT and the rest.This has led to lot of unrest throughout the country. […] I would also like to warn the multinationals that exiting India and layoffs will not be as easy as in US.” This last point ties into another argument: the standard of living in these developing countries will undoubtledly go up, and in so become less appealing to contractors. In India, for example, inflation alone is at about ~6%.
Several people ask for government control, and apparently the Federal Government does have some limits on what can be done outside the country in their projects (“National Security” concerns and all), but this seems to be inneficient or not enough. Still more people complain about the quality of the top management and their compensation packages. I can’t talk about the quality of the management, but it’s true that when CEO’s of large companies leave they tend to take several US Million with them, which (at least to me) seems way too much.
One of the side-effects of these kinds of large-scale layoffs is that smaller companies appear, occasionaly lead by former employees, and betting on making a difference by their agility, proximity and ease of communication, not on price. After all, you don’t buy the cheapest house/car/… available, but the one that better fits your criteria and needs. And “It’s a heck of a lot more fun being the predator than it is being the prey!”, or “I think if you want good service, go to a smaller IT professional services company. They know they have to work harder than the big guys, but they are also more nimble, and customer focussed because they have to be.” And a huge problem to the company doing the lay-offs, like IBM seems to be doing, is the sharp decline in morale by remaining workers.
I know of several deals in Portugal involving outsourcing, so even if we are cheaper than most other countries in Europe, I have no doubt we will feel this as well. Most people know about India’s WiPro buying Enabler in Porto, or the global Microsoft Call-Center in Lisboa, or calls for support that are answered from India and/or Brasil, and there are more deals with countries from eastern Europe and India, as well as Brasil. And with Brasil there isn’t the cultural, language or timezone differences that happens between the US and India.
Assuming you can’t compete on price or skills (because outsourced work IS skilled work), you have to find a way to make a difference and keep yourself in business. IT tends to be an area where professional service companies run only to stay in the same place, much like Lewys Carrol’s red-queen. Maybe we have to run in slightly different direction, and finds paths others can’t take.
“Don’t fight the current. Accept that all forms of service jobs are going the way of manufacturing jobs and work to make yourself more valuable in the domestic marketplace through new skills and a new offer that can’t easily be sent to a distant land.” (also from the comments)
As to Portugal, I also found a list with the Top-50 global outsourcing locations, where the country is listed at #46.
On a related topic, I was researching about multi-national projects using agile methods, and among several horror stories (there are several of these related to outsourced work, but I honestly suspect some of them are just folklore) found Martin Fowler’s post on this same topic, describing his experience at ThoughtWorks. Most of the advice he gives is based on the problem of communication and cultural differences. It does seem complicated, delivering a project using an agile methodology (like scrum or XP) with teams in different countries, seen as it is that those approaches are based in communication itself. He describes some of the ways to minimize this problem.
Food for thought.
Ever seen this alert when trying to debug a project using Visual Studio 2005?
The following module was build with optimizations enabled or without information:
C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\ …
To debug this module, change its build configuration to debug mode. TO suppress this message, disable the ‘Warn if no user code on launch’ debugger option.
Basically this means that Visual […]
After a great Auckland Web Meetup last week John Ballinger has invited me to present at the next one on Silverlight on Thursday June 14th. I will again be presenting alongside Robert O’Callahan (quite accidently I can assure you) and the team at Terabyte.
Needless to say last weeks session was top class and the 3 hour timeslot (+ 4 hours if you are foolish enough to go to the bar afterwards) makes it feel more like a webstock-mini than a traditional user group.
Well enough said… there are places for 75 people to attend and currently at the time of writing 45 places are free so sign-up if you are interested in coming along.
Recently, the company I work for purchased a web services management platform solution from SOA Software. This post starts a short series where I will highlight the key features of the platform, and, how to integrate BizTalk with this solution.
SOA Software provides us with that “last mile” web services capability set that should help […]
A few people have asked me about what courses I am teaching in the near future.
Coming up in June – I’ll be teaching Pluralsight’s Applied BizTalk Server 2006 in
Dallas – http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/appliedbiztalkserver2006.aspx
In July – I’ll be teaching the R2 version of the same course in Los Angeles – http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/appliedbiztalkserver2006.aspx.
Come and we’ll have a big party – the course starts on my birthday!
Ever had a “use of unconstructed message” error message in your orchestrations? Then you know that messages has to be constructed before one can use them within orchestrations. Basically messages in orchestrations are created in ports or when executing a map in a construct shape. However there is also the possibility of creating messages in expression shapes using code. Matt Meleski does a great job explain the different approaches in his Constructing BizTalk 2004 XML Messages (In an Orchestration) – Choices blog post.
However there are some pitfalls when constructing messages from scratch within orchestration (a part from the fact that there really isn’t a clean way of doing it … Scott Colestock has some ideas in this post).
A common problem is XPathUpdateException. Say one has a mapping that looks like the one below where one node isn’t mapped. This will create a message without the ElementB element. This doesn’t have to be in a mapping, it could also happend when constructing a message using code in a expression shape. A common scenario is that we add code for constructing the bone structure of the XML message, then change the schema without updating the construct code. Ergo a message will be constructed without that element (could be both valid or invalid XML then depending on the Min Occurs value)!
[](../assets/2007/05/windowslivewriterxpa.setdistinguishedfieldwhileassigningv-ceb2complexmapping23.jpg)
When we then try to add a value to the element that hasn’t been created the exception will be thrown!
One way around when using a map is to make sure to have a default value on every element to force them be constructed. Adding the following to map will make it work.
It’s a one time mistake but it’s good to know what to look for when the XPathUpdateException in Microsoft.XLANGs.Core.XSDPart.SetDistinguishedField (if it’s a distinguished field that is) shows up in the event log.
Ever had a “use of unconstructed message” error message in your orchestrations? Then you know that messages has to be constructed before one can use them within orchestrations. Basically messages in orchestrations are created in ports or when executing a map in a construct shape. However there is also the possibility of creating messages in expression shapes using code. Matt Meleski does a great […]