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Abstract

This paper discusses my reaction to the circumstance, expressing both the positive and
negative business factors in trade secrets operating in INDIA.
Keywords: Asia, business, positive, negative, ethical beliefs, policies, intellectual
property, patents trademarks, trade secrets.

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There are numerous focal points when contrasted with hindrances in working in an Asian
nation. Anyplace on the planet there can be numerous patent issues, mysteries uncovered issues,
misfortune competitive innovations. Prized formulas are the law in which secures data which are
not normally known and it's extremely classified. Competitive innovations incorporate diverse
fields of industry like equations, procedures, designs, programming outlines, client records,
client inclinations and inner business and advertising arrangements.
Once the task is outsourced to the service provider, he will take the responsibility of
carrying out the tasks and maintaining the organizations assets.
However prior to outsourcing any component of your business to a third-party vendor, it is
essential to understand the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing. Although
outsourcing presents a variety of benefits to your organization, it could also pose
difficulties if not outsourced to the right service provider.
The most commonly outsourced streams of business include:

IT outsourcing

Legal outsourcing

Content Development

Web Design and Maintenance

Recruitment

Logistics

Manufacturing

Technical/Customer Support

The key factors which have led to a growing trend of outsourcing are

Lack of expert-labor in some portions of the business process

Availability of cheaper labor, whilst not comprising on the quality of output

Ability and feasibility to concentrate on the other crucial business process

These factors have specifically contributed to most of the outsourced partners across
different locations in the world. Expertise in communication capabilities, technical
expertise and favorable financial packages are the most important advantages of
outsourcing to India.

The biggest contributing factors to the success of India as an outsourcing hub are:

Outsourcing to India is cheaper. We have seen Indian programming with no structural

integrity or proper checks as to what can be deleted in a system (we are talking about
systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of dollars in
ongoing licensing). A system with no structural integrity will eventually crash and lose
critical data. Poor programming is not isolated to Indian developers, but because Indian
programmers are "cheap", there is no incentive to build efficient systems with good
system architecture. Why bother when you can get a dozen programmers to patch up a
program, make it look good and patch it up again when the first patch falls off. More man

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hours working on a project equates to higher cost and inefficient systems that are prone to
errors and inefficiencies, especially as the size of database grows. Most articles and
analysis about the benefits of outsourcing are based on large enterprises, few consider the
true cost of outsourcing to small to medium sized projects, which cost more to outsource
because of the extra time required to communicate between the client and the
programmers is not offset by savings from mundane programming tasks. High staff
turnover in India has to be factored in to all projects but high attrition has a larger impact
on small and medium sized projects, where a loss of a central developer can be

disasterous.
Outsourcing to India is easy. Communication problems and cultural differences hinder
development. It is difficult enough to translate technical and programming concepts to
clients and establish feasible project goals without having to provide clear instructions to
Indian programmers who have a different grasp of English. Misunderstanding happen,
projects evolve but not necessarily in the right direction. The true cost of poor
development may vary from a financial loss from system downtime to a system that
collapses and loses critical data. Outsourcing creates an environment that breeds
misunderstanding because communication is not as direct as it would have been with
someone that understands your business and your needs, ideally from the same country or

culture.
Indian programmers are better. Though there must be some excellent Indian
programmers, the vast majority are hired to churn out code. We have a term for it, it is
called spaghetti programming because it works by looping round and round but should
anything go wrong, it is difficult to fix. Whether Indian programmers are better is very
difficult to judge because there are a lot of average programmers of all nationalities.

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Because of the law of supply and demand, the better developers are hired by banks and
large software companies and the less skilled left for everyone else. Attrition rates for
Indian programmers is particularly high - so you are less likely to get a good developer to
work on you long term than you are if you hired locally.

Globalization has led to the emergence of a cosmopolitan culture across the world and the
decline of regional barriers of trade, investment, language and other cultural factors. Offshore
outsourcing is a result of these changes, which have also resulted in a good number of
Westerners choosing to work in India and this number is expected to grow in the future.
For example - O2I is located in Bangalore, home to many international companies. When you
outsource to O2I, you get your projects completed faster, and are assured of high quality levels
driven by Six Sigma principles and standards.
Being situated on the other side of the globe from North America, India has the advantage
of time zone differences compared to other countries, which benefits many companies. Work
sent to India by the end of the day in the US is completed during daytime in India and sent back.
Hence the job is done in a day's time and turnaround time is reduced. This difference in time
zones has worked wonders for most companies who have outsourced their work to India.
Outsource to india also benefit from the different time zone advantage. The Indian Government
is aware of the growth of the outsourcing industry in the country, and is providing all the support

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it can, such as lower interest rates, fewer foreign exchange restrictions and development of IT
enclaves, which have helped the outsourcing industry, along with the encouragement of foreign
direct investment into the country. With the Rupee now being fully convertible, Indian
businesses are free to invest anywhere. A new and confident India has emerged, though some old
problems still persist.
Better Communications: Outsourcing has largely become possible due to the
improvements in communications between countries. Distance has not a limitation anymore to
businesses in the West, allowing them to outsource their jobs to India. Faster and cheaper
communications systems have made telephony, e-mail, videoconferencing and data transfer
easier and more reliable than ever before.
Human Resources: India has a large pool of educated workers, which is one of the major
benefits of outsourcing to India. The availability of large numbers of workers has allowed
vendors in India to handle large volumes of outsourced work.
Proficiency in English: India has the largest population of English speakers. Due to its
colonial legacy, English became a part of the Indian education system, which has now become an
advantage. China and Japan have challenged the world with their technological and
manufacturing prowess, but could not beat India in terms of outsourcing, as their citizens found
it harder to master foreign languages. Indians thus have an edge over other countries due to their
fluency in English. With their will to take on the world, Indians are also learning other foreign
languages like Spanish, German, French and Japanese at their schools.
Disadvantages of outsourcing to India

Licensing and copyright issues. Outsourced projects may be copied and sold again to one
of your competitors. This leads to serious issues with regards to licensing and copyright.

Time lost managing project. Any financial gain must be weighed against the time spent
having to manage the project from half way across the world. Communicating to the
client and then having to translate requirements to the Indian programmers and back and
forth. Paying for airfares, accommodation, visas, etc need to be factored in.

Poorer standard of work resulting from poor communication and cultural

differences. Financial losses that result from competitor's having better systems.

Political instability - It is a fact that India is not as politically stable as Australia.

Assassinations can lead to street unrest that can shut businesses down for days.

Lack of quality control. Outsourcing a project requires a great deal of trust because the
quality of programming varies considerably. Most problems do not surface till later
on, and unless a project is written well, it is expensive to fix. Patch after patch is
applied to dodgy programming.

Customer service. Pushy sales people are always a sign that something is not quite right.
If in presales, Indian developers call and email persistently, refuse to accept 'no' for an
answer and continue to speak about how great their company and developers are, then
what happens in the middle of a project, when something needs to be fixed, will they
listen then? Establishing a relationship, is more than - 'we can get you a better price' - it is
about working together to achieve a common goal and this means being able to listen and
provide thoughtful answers, not just sales rhetoric.

Risks to confidential data and personal data. The world may becoming a global village
but laws that protect privacy and personal information are locally based. Once you
outsource your data, you have very little control about what happens to that data.

Increasing long term costs. According to Forbes magazine's article "The Coming Death
of Indian Outsourcing" India's cost advantage, which is currently 1:3 in 2007 will
disappear by 2015, because of Indian wages are rising at a rate of 15% a year.Companies
that choose to outsource to India, need to budget for long term increased costs, and
provision for time to manage the project as well as budget for the risks.

National security - entrusting critical systems like banking and government systems to a
foreign country would have been unheard of many years ago but today, private
companies who hold government data and banks outsource their systems and data to
foreign countries for profit. Confidential information is shipped overseas, with no thought
about what happens if India decides that Australia is a threat.

Identify Trade Secrets:

To best protect those trade secrets whose theft would cause the most harm to a company,
companies should first document and locate the inventory of their trade secrets. This first step
gathers key stakeholders business and product unit, R&D, legal, finance and risk leaders to
inventory the trade secrets maintained by the company. Ultimately, forming a cross-functional
team with senior management support is critical to this step and those that follow. Discussion and
debate of what constitutes a trade secret for the company is encouraged, as stakeholders should
emerge from this first step with a broad consensus of not only the definition of a trade secret for
their company, but also a list of the companys trade secrets aggregated into categories such as:

Product Information

Research & Development

Critical & Unique Business Processes

Sensitive Business Information

IT Systems & Applications

Economic Impact of Trade Secret Theft

In this step, the company determines the adverse economic impact to the company if an
individual trade secret asset is misappropriated. This process enables management to segment
the total impact into manageable building blocks. It also provides an understanding of both direct
and indirect impacts to help to establish a complete picture of the economic losses attributable to
a trade secret theft.

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Direct Impact: A measure of the direct financial and economic losses attributable to a
trade secret theft event i.e., lost sales/revenues, lost market share, lost profits, and/or lost
economic opportunity; and

Indirect Impact: An assessment of the indirect factors impacting a companies

short/long-term ability to compete in the marketplace due to the theft of the output of its
investmente.g., reduction in customer trust due to concerns about ongoing relationships or
adverse press impacting the companys reputation in the marketplace.

The results of the impact assessment provide the basis for establishing a workable return on
investment for improving trade secret protection and within this, IT security. In most companies,
compliance is seen as a cost, not an investment. The valuation is critical to helping companies
understand that improving trade secret protection is an investment that has a quantifiable ROI.
Conclusion:
India has a leading edge to attract many foreign companies for outsourcing their non core
activates. The large number of IT graduates, the mastering of foreign languages, and the IT
infrastructure it holds will still be the factor for judging outsourcing decisions to India. India has
to focus more on reducing cost to be of great benefit to the outsourcing company. Competition
will grow by time from other countries such as China where cost will be an influential factor.
Therefore, reduction of inflation of labor cost should be new area of research for Indian
Outsourcing Industry. In terms of manufacturing, the government should keep working in
liberalizing its heavy industry by allowing more number of foreign investors to pour their FDI in
the country. Such a step from the government will create more jobs and opportunities to India.
Further studies on the advancement made by countries such as China, South Africa, Philippines,

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and Malaysia should be conducted by Indian researchers in order to maintain Indias dominant
position in the field of outsourcing.

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References

http://www.sqlsummit.com/Trends/Terrorism.htm

http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,22410493-14334,00.html

http://www.passioncomputing.com/articles/disadvantages-of-indian-outsourcing