Middle management just isn't what it used to be. The old definition of a middle manager--those senior staff in charge of overseeing the details of day-to-day management and reporting to top management--is too narrow, says Leslie Willcocks, Professor of Technology Work and Globalization at the London School of Economics (LSE) and head of its Outsourcing Unit.

The need to keep information secure is not a recent development. To satisfy this need, most organisations construct a list of security requirements based on common sense. This has proven fairly effective with simple and well understood media such as pen and paper. As information management (and its security) has become more complex in nature, the likelihood of a gap in that common sense list of requirements has increased.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have studied a variety of outsourcing deals-from IT and back-office work to manufacturing and logistics-and identified the most common mistakes organizations make when partnering with an external provider.

Marylyn Tesconi, who manages a large office, takes graduate-level courses and volunteers at a local health clinic in San Francisco, has more than enough to do without spending hours on the phone trying to get her home router to work. And she certainly has no patience for techs who yell and supervisors who hang up without solving her problem.

IT is undergoing one of the most significant transformations in recent memory -- yet most IT practitioners (including telecom managers) are only dimly aware of what's happening.

There are two hot topics in the U.S. offshore outsourcing industry today-first, what the likely impact of the recession will be and second, what will be the likely impact of Barak Obama's presidency. While the former has attracted some good intellectual debate, with sound arguments and evidence to support both sides of the story, the latter has received pretty naive coverage, mostly from senior executives of offshore outsourcing or advisory firms desperate to allay their customer's concerns. One fundamental question that they fail to address is why Obama should care about offshore outsourcing. If it was so simple and so straightforward that offshore outsourcing is good for corporations, good for countries, good for economies, then why would Obama even consider doing anything about it?

Globalization is suffering from economic, financial and political challenges. IT organizations can improve results and mitigate risks by revamping offshore strategies. Implementing globalization no longer creates automatic competitive cost advantage. While nearly all companies have globalization programs, most were created randomly and reactively without strategic consideration. To gain competitive advantage, companies must strategically engineer the integration and synergy from service providers.

The financial fraud perpetrated by Satyam Computer Services executives could trigger near-term disruptions across the outsourcing and IT industries. Ramalinga Raju, the company's founder and chairman, resigned last week. He has admitted to inflating Satyam's cash balances and the credit amounts it was owed while understating its liabilities. This scandal has many ramifications for Satyam's customers as well as those of other outsourcing companies.