DrKW CIO JP Rangaswami on the 'new outsource'

Silicion.com's interview with JP Rangaswami, CIO at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), provides a glimpse into one of the smartest people in IT. He is one of the few CIOs unafraid to try out a broad array of new technologies and open source projects. Here's a sample of the interview conducted by Andy McCue:

...he sees open source providing more viable enterprise competition for CRM and ERP systems in the future. "The open source movement is where we're heading."

In fact, he describes open source as the "new outsource" and criticises some of the badly-informed decisions to outsource both onshore and offshore in recent years. In financial services in particular, Rangaswami sees great potential in shared service opportunities between competitors for standard and commodity processes.

"Much of what I see sent offshore is commoditised stuff where the value should have been in coming together as an industry and saying we'll build utilities that all banks and financial houses can use. The concept of some of our commodity activities being considered differentiating just is not sustainable any more," he says.

Instead companies should only be going offshore to acquire talent they can't get in the UK or Europe. In fact the "war for talent" and the lack of IT graduates coming through UK universities worries Rangaswami. He lays some of the blame at the door of other CIOs who he believes talk technology down too much.