U.S. Firm Says Outsourcer Holding Its Data Hostage Offshore (India)

[OhioChick]

In a lawsuit, The Buying Triangle says Infosys is holding its data hostage at an offshore location, exposed its customer data online, and stole its business plans. Infosys has countersued.


August 7, 2007 09:40 AM


A provider of spend management services says one of India's largest outsourcers is holding its data hostage at an offshore location and is refusing to return the information unless legal claims against it are dropped.
New York City-based The Buying Triangle also says that Infosys, through a subsidiary, exposed its customer data online and stole its business plans.

TBT hired Infosys BPO last year, when the unit was known as Progeon Ltd., to host, support, and maintain its P2P Smart spend management application. TBT customers access P2P Smart online to help analyze and reduce their purchasing costs.

The deal quickly went sour after TBT found that its customers were frequently unable to access P2P Smart because servers Infosys set up in Bangalore to host the application were frequently down, TBT alleges in a lawsuit it's filed against Infosys BPO.

"Between July 2006 and March 2007, there were approximately 15 different occasions in which the FTP server was unavailable," TBT charges in court papers filed in June in U.S. District Court for Southern New York.

To boot, TBT alleges Infosys BPO failed to properly secure customer information on the P2P Smart server. The result: TBT's customers were able to view each other's confidential data, TBT claims.

TBT says that when it tried to cancel its contract with Infosys BPO in April, the Indian service provider refused to release its data unless TBT promised not to pursue any legal claims. "Infosys would return neither TBT's intellectual property nor the confidential account data of TBT clients," TBT alleges in court papers.

TBT also alleges that on a site visit to Bangalore its employees discovered that Infosys was using confidential TBT marketing materials to pitch clients like CIBC, Alcoa, and British Petroleum on a spend management service that Infosys was contemplating. "It is clear that Infosys intends to enter the procurement space occupied by TBT, supplying a motive for its wrongful refusal to return TBT's trade secrets," TBT claims.

http://www.informationweek.com/outsourcing/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201204202

[tularetom]

1. Sending all our data to India - what could possibly go wrong?

I think we are going to see a lot more of this and eventually see a lot of industrial espionage by foreign corporations further eroding our position in world markets and nudging us further toward third world status.

[Deja Q]

3. Yup, they hate us - but certainly don't mind the jobs.

And why not? Look at the benefits.

[OhioChick]

7. Bet They Love Hillary. n/t

[EVDebs]

10. Say "TaTa" to your jobs if Hilary gets the nod. eom

[ChromeFoundry]

2. I can't say I'm suprised...

I am certain this will become common practice in the years to come. US corporations need to understand that US law is not world law, and cannot be enforced outside of it's borders. duh!

:patriot:

[Stargazer99]

4. How long will it take them to figure out outsourcing has its own

expenses? this is the second time I've heard of American business being blackmailed

[ChromeFoundry]

6. When CEO stop getting million dollar bonuses.

The stockholders need to wise up.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. There should be a direct way to retaliate against a CEO who makes

a mistake of this magnitude. Eliminating his golden parachute, would be a start.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

5. GOOD! I hope corporations that outsourced end up with lots of crap like this happening to them

Hopefully it will revert all the outsourcing and companies will come back to us. After all, they want to sell us our shit, don't they? They just don't want to spend money on us by hiring us to make it, they just want us to buy their crap.

[Exultant Democracy]

9. oh no that poor corporation...

hahahhahhaha :rofl:

[eppur_se_muova]

11. No one could have predicted that ... oh, f*ck it. nt

[liberalla]

12. Lightbulb moment

Oh shit. Could anything go wrong when we take the business overseas?
Tax credits and cheap labor vs. risking/losing company data, customers and internal knowledge of operations (trade secrets?)

I hope this will cause some companies to reconsider...