TECHNOLOGICAL GLOBALIZATION

Multiculturalism and Geographic Dispersion ­ The graduate produces a plan for addressing the challenges of multiculturalism and geographic dispersion as they impact information and communication technology.

Global Technology Standards­ The graduate evaluates standards and international fora and their critical role in the globalization of communication technology.

Scenario:

You are the IT director for a company that creates antivirus software. The company's only office is in North Carolina. The company of just over 120 employees has grown quickly due to its new antivirus product for mobile phones.

Because of this growth, more software  developers are needed. After researching possibilities, executive management has decided to outsource the majority of the smartphone antivirus product development for a particular operating system to a team of developers in India, while maintaining the development for a second operating system in North Carolina.

The team in India will work closely with the development team in North Carolina. Project managers for both teams will reside in North Carolina. You have been asked to evaluate a plan for working with the new team in India, which includes the following elements:

Infrastructure and Connection Requirements: The India office will have a dedicated E1 line that regularly provides 2 Mbps of connectivity.

Security Requirements: The IT department will create a firewall­to­firewall virtual private network (VPN) between the North Carolina and India offices. All additional traffic will be encrypted using public key encryption and 128­bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

Backup Needs: The India office relies on power from the city, but also has dedicated diesel generators available in case of outages lasting more than two hours. Data from both offices will be backed up and stored using a third­party archiving service.

Research Responsibilities: Both the North Carolina and India offices will have research and development departments.

Language and Cultural Concerns: The India team will communicate in English. Culturally, the developers in India are used to a 6­day work week. They will not continue this pattern, but will begin to work 5­day weeks. Generally, a 40­hour work week is expected, but additional hours are certainly a possibility. These will be salaried positions.

Personnel Changes and Considerations: The 15­member development team in North Carolina has never been particularly cohesive. However, they are very good programmers. Company management hopes that asking the team to work in a liaison and project management role with the India office will resolve this issue.

Task:

A.  Analyze issues the company would encounter by outsourcing research and development to India in the following areas:

1.  Technology standards

2.  Infrastructure

B.  Discuss needed revisions to the company's outsourcing plan based on your analysis of technology standards and infrastructure.

1.  Recommend additional technologies to help the company outsource to India.

a.  Explain the technology standards and best practices that will aid in the company's outsourcing efforts.

C.  Discuss how to address two cultural issues as the company begins to do business between India and North Carolina.

D.  When you use sources, include all in­text citations and references in APA format.