Does Terrorism Effect Outsourcing?

When outsourcing was just blooming, the threat of terrorism particularly to the business community was thought to be a third world phenomenon. But, with the attack on American soil during the 9/11 attacks, the business world opened its eyes to the way terrorsim impacts the way we do business.

India is one of the favored destinations for outsourcing, It has also seen its share terrorism with the Indian parliament attack in 2001 and the recent Mumbai attacks that brought the country to a standstill in 2006. Other prominent terrorist activites include the Bali bombings in 2002 the Beslan massacre (Russia, 2004), the Madrid train bombings in 2004, the London bombings n 2005 and the Glasgow airport attack of 2007.

Most convincing of the facts that terrorism continues to threaten business activities despite the international communities watch on terror was the Mumbai attack on the Taj Hotel, a preferred tourist spot and other popular locations in the city. According to reports, there were 20 confirmed terror attacks in India in the year 2008. Hence, it is common for many companies to consider India as an unsafe place to outsource or to do business. It is a common scenario for businesses that have considered outsourcing as a business approach to disregard this tool in their business strategy over this concern.

Nonetheless, analysts also point out that terrorism doest not impact outsourcing in any way. This is primarily because all the work that is outsourced is backed up on a server that can be accessed anywhere in the world. For example, a company in California can outsource its bookkeeping to Bangalore, India. In the usual case, outsourcing vendors in India utilize Ibackup servers to transfer and store their backup files. These Ibackup servers are located in California and utilize a 128 bit encryption. In fact, the individual who has the login credentials to a particular account can access it from anywhere in the world. In terms of the work that is done, in this case, there is no real danger of losing it because even if there is an event of a terror attack in India and the offices of the vendor are destroyed, the data is still unharmed.

It is a common practice to for Indian vendors to back up their data on a daily basis. Analysts say that U.S. firms who outsource to India or who would like to outsource to India should request for a daily backup.

There is yet another perspective to the impact of terrorism on outsourcing. Terrorsim can strike even the most secure locations like the U.S. In that case, if a company’s office premises are destroyed, it is definitely better have the company data safely stored in another part of the world. In this sense, outsourcing provides added security to the company’s files. When the business is ready to open after rebuilding its infrastructure, the outsourced data is also available. Hence, this advantage is unique to outsourcing in that terrorsim does not impact virtual data, despite problems to infrastructure of businesses.

Jacob Cherian writes for SourcingLine, a leading provider of directories on top web design companies and software development firms software development firms.