Start-up Outsources to China 'For the Best Brains' to Implement ITO 2.0. ITO 1.0 "was largely a move to low-cost-labor countries. Cheap labor was the central tenet," says Timothy Chou of Openwater Networks. He maintains ITO 2.0 is not about sending work to the cheapest supplier; instead, "it's about moving the work to where the best brains are." That's why his company selected Augmentum to write its software.
Editor John Foley interviews Augmentum COO Frank Yu and Brock Purpura, CEO of Etology. Foley writes in his blog, "Augmentum doesn't concentrate only on big name accounts, nor can it be narrowly cast, as offshore outsourcers sometimes are, as providing development services on the lower end of the skills chain. It offers software architecture and design help, implementation, and support for companies ranging from startups to enterprise customers."
We are impressed with the ambition and recent growth of Augmentum. The company stands to benefit from two macro-level trends: increasing interest in China and improving indigenous English skills. The company recognizes the criticality of talent to its business and has concrete plans to grow its workforce.
Wayne Hom, CTO & EVP of Augmentum, was interviewed by Gaming Trend at www.gamingtrend.com. Wayne and Keith Schleicher, host of the program talked about how the technologies and approaches of gaming and Web 2.0 used together can actually make the workplace more productive and more enjoyable.
Even in Silicon Valley, 65-year-old Leonard Liu is a rare breed of entrepreneur.The former IBM executive was born and raised in China and Taiwan, and educated at Princeton University. He's a cross-cultural businessman with decades of experience in the USA and Asia. And at an age when many CEOs retire to the golf links, Liu has launched a promising outsourcing start-up called Augmentum. Liu, who came out of a brief retirement to start Augmentum in 2003, says: "Would you rather sit on the beach and watch the sun set, or build something that will have a lasting impact on the world?" Just like Indian executives decades ago who started outsourcing giants Tata, Infosys and Wipro, Liu hopes that Augmentum will grow into a global corporate titan that uses Chinese software designers at a third of the costs in the USA.
Augmentum featured in Businessweek article, "China: The Next Software Center". "The world is going to need [software center] alternatives to India....Only China has enough human resources, enough human capital, to be able to make a difference," Liu argues.
Augmentum included in leading analyst research report on Consulting and Systems Integration.
Augumentum is listed as a vendor providing Globally Delivered Customer Application Development Services in Gartner's 2006 Hype Cycle report on Consulting and Systems Integration, along with other vendors. The full report is available to Gartner subscribers at www.gartner.com. Hype Cycle for Consulting and Systems Integration, 2006: Matthew Goldman, et. al.
Leonard Liu tells story of coming to America for graduate school and becoming a technology leader at IBM at Job Migration Task Force commissioned by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).
