HP: Giving Outsourcing a Bad Name

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    In yesterday’s blog entry I wrote that I cringe a little when I tell people I cover outsourcing for a living. But I gotta say, with its latest antics, HP is giving outsourcing a bad rep. Surely, it, with its multi-billion-dollar business in services, is in a position to understand the creed, outsource operations, not responsibilities.


    Now that we’ve learned that the CEO knew what was going on too, where will it end? Maybe the board needs to reconsider its decision to grant him the Chairman title as well. Oh, wait. Can’t do that. The board just lost a couple of members. It might have a tough time pulling together the quorum it would need to take a recount.


    Tomorrow, Mark Hurd will be hosting a press conference to "give as much clarity as we can to these matters…" My guess? Hurd will play the innocent and lay the blame at the feet of tiny, sleazy-sounding Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., the Boston company at the center of the effort to uncover the source of corporate leaks.


    I rather like the editorial expressed in the NY Times here:


    It should remind those of us watching from the sidelines just how porous our privacy is in an era of databases and hackers and sophisticated snoops, and how much we need greater legal safeguards and protections to keep pace with technological advances.


    But who do we turn to when it’s the companies at the forefront of those advances that are doing the snooping?