I gave a lightning talk at the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference http://www.glsec.org/ http://www.glsec.org/ with the premise that in-house, outsourcin

I gave a lightning talk at the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference http://www.glsec.org/ http://www.glsec.org/ with the premise that in-house, outsourcing, and off-shoring development can be modeled in systems engineering terms of bandwidth and latency. I posted the talk on my blog http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/ http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/. My conclusion from observing over the years is that companies with failed business models go offshore to die. Not all businesses that go off-shore die, but the ones that have business models that require close interaction with their suppliers and customers, that require quick reaction, or that require unique (domain) knowledge won't be successful with a move off-shore. The businesses that survive, even thrive, off-shore are ones that are or can become commodity suppliers (e.g. low bandwidth is sufficient for control and they can tolerate high latency on their product). Sometimes the business model can be changed to adapt but a business is too ossified to adapt. Sometimes the whole business is no longer viable and the end is inevitable. Either way, historically, trying to maintain a failed business model simply by cutting labor costs fails. Local news is not something you can off-shore successfully. It requires high bandwidth, local knowledge, and low latency. From the article: "Macpherson admits you can lose something in the translation — the Pasadena City Council Webcast that the Indian reporters now watch once missed two African-American lawmakers walking out in protest — but says the question is, how significant is it?" Ummm... like, everything?