Being in Bangalore, I am fortunate to be able to see the outsourcing juggernaut in my backyard. Palpable changes have happened here in real estate, tech placements, number of back-office shops, number of off-shore units and the number of skilled professionals - now with over a decade of real IT experience. The current model of outsourcing isn't new to anyone - order procurement, setting up of delivery framework and execution on the guidelines of international standards. This model has reaped dividends for numerous companies here - resulting in copious cash flows into the city. While this model has served well to the affluent foreign companies, it does not scale-down for the SME/SOHO companies, who may not have the financial muscle to setup an outsourcing unit.

One solution was proposed to address the concerns of this category of companies: B2B. But then, that was pre-boom time. And after the shakeout, the word itself is laced with disdain. The vehicle for implementing B2B doesn't exist anymore - it probably would never work in its original avatar. Even then, the needs of small units for outsourcing are real. They seek setting up outsourced entities with a handful of people. Their only restraint is the entry-barrier of setting these small entities. Setting up one of these would involve renting out space, recruitment, training, setting & measuring performance and managing the operations of the unit.

Are we looking at a problem here, or an opportunity?

This is where micro-outsourcing could serve the needs. This business model would consists of, an aggregator service - to collect the requirements of the small outsourcers and refine them at the point of entry, on-site processing of the requirements as an isolated unit - like planning out a project, off-shoring and meshing up with all the other requests - like processing the order in juxtaposition with the others and then dispatch and execution. You're right if u found a striking similarity of this model with SCM - u can call it the intellectual SCM.

Like always, the real challenge is in developing a working model and then going on to execute it. This implementation would not only require a mashup of existing business ideas, but also provides an opportunity to create entirely new ones to address this unique scenario.

Ok, first the news… I'm now a part of the Google domain email beta testing program. (https://www.google.com/hosted/)

It all began, thanks to GoogleWatchers - I think there's a need to coin a term here. GoogleWatchers are those Google aficionados who watch every move the Mountain View -based company makes. Whenever there's a public service launch or a beta group is invited to participate in one of Google's programs, these GoogleWatchers are there.

When the Google domain email hosting service was launched, it was splashed across many GoogleWatcher's blogs. Since I was involved in maintaining a domain, I thought about giving it a shot. Actually, I was already using a customized version of Google-for-your-domain-email. I've redirected all the emails I've created to individual gmail accounts and activated the 'send mail as' feature (that's tucked under Settings>Accounts). Thus, when an email is sent to an @domain address, it first goes to the hosting server. The email forwarder there sends the mail to a gmail account. When someone needs to reply to this email, it would seem coming from the domain email address and not someone@gmail.com. This completes the cycle of email communication. There is only one thing I need to regularly take care of - manually clearing the mails from my hosted server. A copy of all emails is stored on the Domain space and needs clearing manually - probably this is a hosting service limitation.

So, when I start using the gmail hosted email solution, first, I'd have 1 GB space for all my users. Second, no more manual clearing of mails would be required (search, don't sort :). And, the Google dashboard interface is a lot slicker that the cranky one offered by my hosting provider.

For activities like managing domain emails, convenience is the mantra. And Google seems to know it well! What do we have next… Web hosting? (http://pages.google.com)