NASA work to be outsourced

The latest organisation to announce its outsourcing plans is none other than NASA, the US government's agency for the nation's civilian space programme, writes Benzinga.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is keen to begin funding private companies to carry NASA astronauts into space. The controversial proposal will face many budgetary and political hurdles - questions have already been raised about the riskiness of the concept, as well as the wisdom of diverting funds from an already cash-strapped NASA.

The outsourcing idea gained steam following recommendations from a presidential panel headed by Norman Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Outsourcing has roared back to life in the past six months, with some of it moving to countries like India, and from India to places like China, the Philippines, Costa Rica and even Romania, according to a new study, says Economic Times.

Not everything can be outsourced effectively, though, says Forbes.com. "Computer customer service that was outsourced to India, for example, was notorious for alienating customers.

"Dell eventually brought much of its call-centre support back into the US from India, while Apple has made a point of keeping support within the country in which the calls originate," it said.

European paper and signage distributor Paperlinx has decided to outsource its entire IT infrastructure to the French company Bull. As part of the agreement, Bull will consolidate the client's currently scattered IT resources in its data centre in Barnsley, UK, reports Datacentre Dynamics.

Paperlinx currently houses all of its servers in 22 data centres located near or in its branch offices in 16 countries across Europe.

Using virtualisation technology, Bull will shrink what is presently more than 700 physical servers down to about 80. The client's infrastructure will be backed up at a secondary site in Netherlands.