I. Globalism in eBusiness
The Internet is the only uniform
communication mechanism across the globe.
Different countries use different languages, telephone standards, and
television systems, but the Internet protocol (ip) is the same worldwide. One of the favorite cartoons of the early
internet era showed two dogs sitting at a computer while one remarked to the
other: “on the internet, no one knows that you are a dog.” On the internet, no
one has to know your species, location, race, gender, or any other characteristic
irrelevant to the transaction.
The ubiquity and speed of the internet means that an Asian company can have the same access to a New York customer as a New York company.
We will examine the implications of a global
market for commerce, operations, legal systems, and the workforce.
The figure above shows the projected growth
of international markets according to M. Vander Weyer in Strategy and Business.[1] Note that the expected growth in Asian
markets will exceed any other markets and will cause those markets to pass
western Europe at some time in 2001.
Operations – Boeing Aircraft and the application of “round the clock” engineering. The mergence of global markets and products has implications for the operations of global businesses as well. Some companies are now using the time differences to institute “round the clock” operations in customer support or engineering. This can avoid the expensive and hard to manage need for shift operations and can take advantage of talent wherever it is found. Engineering teams at Boeing in Seattle can work on a project all day and then hand the project off to their collaborating team in Japan who may in turn hand it on to Europe and eventually pass it back to Seattle the following morning. Global internet communications makes this a practical way to operate without loss of time and information in the hand offs.
Enterprises that require extensive customer support operations can take advantage of the globalization in several different ways. For example, an English speaker who contacts United Airlines in the Netherlands can be (and often is) redirected to service agents in the United Kingdom if the Netherlands agents are busy. For very specialized engineering support, callers may be routed to wherever that support is available at a particular time, making it easier to provide 24 hours uspport for a variety of products. For example, customers seeking support from Gilat Communications-Mentergy for the corporate training software and hardware systems may be routed to Falls Church, Virginia or Tel Aviv Israel for support of satellite based systems, Troy, NY for support of internet based systems, and Salt Lake City Utah for support for content and tools. If the New York Office is closed, then one of the other offices may step forward to handle the support need.
Workforce – Off shore programming, Indian programmers, Taiwanese design houses, IT waivers for immigration. Technology Ukraine. World Trade organization and the China entry. European Economic Union.
HOUSE COMMITTEE APPROVES
H-1B BILL
Posted at May 18, 2000 09:24
AM
THE U.S. HOUSE Judiciary
Committee Wednesday voted
18-11 to send to the full
House a bill that proposes
to remove the cap on the
number of H-1B visas
available to foreign workers
for the next two years --
a burning issue in the
labor-strapped
information technology
business.
But not all companies would
be eligible to use the
additional visas that would
be made possible by the
bill, which is called the
Technology Worker Temporary
Relief Act and was proposed
by Reps. Lamar Smith,
R-Texas, and Sheila
Jackson-Lee, D-Texas.
For the full story:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/05/18/000518hnh1b.xml