For long India has been considered as the world's top outsourcing destination. Not any more it seems. A latest study by Black Book of outsourcing on top 25 riskiest locations for outsourcing has as many as eight Indian cities. The reasons given are broadly terrorism, pollution and geopolitical issues.

A separate Black Book of outsourcing study (released simultaneously) lists 25 safest offshoring locations. Incidentally, not even a single Indian city figures in the safest list.

Here's over to the top 10 riskiest outsourcing destinations:

1. Capital city of Colombia tops the list of riskiest outsourcing destinations according to Black Book of Outsourcing. Corruption and organized crime are at the highest in Bogata. The country's unstable currency is also regarded as a reason why companies may find it going tough. Other issues that Black Book Outsourcing highlights are transnational & geopolitical, unsecured & unprotected networks, infrastructure, technology & telephone and terrorist or rebel target threats. Besides these, uncontrolled environmental waste and pollution and legal system immaturity also form part of reasons why companies may not consider Bogato as an ideal outsourcing location.

2. At no. 2 on the riskiest outsourcing destinations list is Thailand's Bangkok city. Country's unstable currency, unsecured & unprotected networks, infrastructure and immaturity of the country's legal system are the factors that make the city a risky destination for outsourcers. According to Black Book of Outsourcing, Bangkok also has a high corruption and organized crime rate. Some other reasons that make it not-so ideal outsourcing destination is uncontrolled environmental waste & pollution and terrorist threats.

With over 400 BPO companies, Scotland is emerging as a credible nearshore-cum-onsite destination in mainland Europe for Indian firms, given its competitive costs and sizeable talent pool.

However, the presence of Indian BPO firms has been very few in the region. Hero ITeS, part of the Munjal Group, had acquired Scotland’s biggest call centre Telecom Service Centre (TSC) for about $81 million in 2007 and others such as TCS provide contractor services here. Indian BPO companies that have their own centres in Europe is very limited. The only one worth mentioning is HCL, which set up its call centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Mark Hallan, first secretary, Scottish Development International, said that India has been identified as a top-priority market for investments in the region and they are currently holding discussions with around 15 companies, though he declined to name the firms.

NEW YORK: News Corp’s MySpace social-networking unit fired almost 30 per cent of its staff to save money in response to falling advertising sales and gains by larger rival Facebook Inc.

Major social network MySpace has dropped a bomb today by announcing a restructuring phase will result in a reduction of its workforce by almost 30%. Aimed to turn the News Corporation-owned company in a more innovative, efficient, and entrepreneurial business, the layoff plan affects all US divisions and will lower the number of domestic staff at MySpace to 1,000 employees. The announcement suggests the company eliminated about 400 jobs. Dani Dudeck, a MySpace spokeswoman, declined to comment on the firings, severance costs or how much money may be saved.

"Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. "I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product." Putting it simple Jonathan Miller, News Corporation's CEO of Digital Media and Chief Digital Officer said that "MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today's marketplace." The reality being that Facebook and Twitter are the 'hip' things these days.

News Corp Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch is retooling his Internet operation to regain momentum. The $580 million purchase of MySpace in October 2005 looked shrewd the next year when Google Inc signed a $900 million accord to sell ads on the site. Facing the expiration of that deal and gains by Facebook, Murdoch, 78, hired former AOL chief Jonathan Miller in April to overhaul the digital operation.

“Two years ago MySpace seemed like it had unlimited upside, and people were throwing around valuations in the multibillions of dollars,” said Doug Creutz, an analyst with Cowen & Co in San Francisco. “The site has lost a lot of that cachet.”

One of the challenges facing software testers has been the availability of an agreed set of document standards and templates for testing. The IEEE 829 provides an internationally recognised set of standards for test planning documentation.

IEEE 829 2008, also known as the IEEE 829 Standard for Software Test Documentation, is an IEEE standard that specifies the form of a set of documents for use in eight defined stages of software testing, each stage potentially producing its own separate type of document.

We all know that Cloud Computing is one of the hot topics and lots of big companies adopted it already. Every week you can read an article on the internet or in one of the IT magazines. One year ago I started thinking on this subject after reading a number of articles on the activities of Google and IBM. The question that occur to me, can we introduce this also within the testing industry?

To understand the effect of Cloud computing on the delivery model in the testing industry, you need first to know what’s the IT or testing market currently asking and what can cloud computing offer. Let’s  first start with why already for a number of years companies see the importance of testing. The current keywords in the business are:

1. 1. Business is demanding earlier Time to Market (TTM).
2. 2. Traceability of the quality through the full process of software development.
3. 3. Complexity of the business chain.
4. 4. New non-functional requirements (compliancy, usability, performance etc.).
5. 5. More efficient ways to buy and deploy technology.

These drivers in the business are speeding up the process and make IT & end to end testing to become a standard utility of everyday business.

The term “Cloud computing” has grown too big to explain in a couple of keywords. In the next paragraph I will explain a little more on the term and background, service offerings, risks and trends for the near future. In the second paragraph I will continue on the impact and possibilities for the testing industry, embrace the use of Cloud computing in it’s full appearance.