At the February 4, 2011 "All-Hands" IT meeting, David O'Brien, the Vice President of IT announced that The Standard is evaluating a large-scale outsourcing of IT, QA, and Infrastructure to a single vender in India as a means to reduce costs. The Standard expects its assessment to be concluded by November 2011.
O'Brien said he hopes IT staff remain at The Standard to cooperate with current and upcoming knowledge transfer to Indian workers who will be replacing existing staff.
The process of IT lay-offs has already begun. The COBOL programmers were given notice earlier this week that their jobs will be eliminated by this coming July because all COBOL work is being transferred to India. Other groups have already had people from India introduced prior to today's announcement.
O'Brien said The Standard's competitor companies have already out-sourced their IT department's off-shore as a means of reducing their costs. The Standard is, by his description, merely following suite by neccessity.
For several years O'Brien stressed how behind the company is in terms of electronic services, and how this was a prime reason for The Standard not being competitive. O'Brien's answer then was to be more competitive by investing in The Standard's IT infrastructure to produce better product. Now the answer is to reduce costs by dismantling that infrastructure and outsource IT to India. The two are polar opposites.
