With outsourcing, many big corporations are becoming much more fragmented than they were before. It’s often a gradual process, with a bunch of internal staff first being moved only in name, but over time it takes hold in more concrete ways: being kicked off the email system, moved to new facilities off the internal computer networks, deleted from the corporate directories, that kind of thing. (As well as untold “new” people joining the fray.)

Which can mean a lot of inconvenience. Suddenly the outsourced people have all their phone numbers and email addresses change. They can’t easily find contacts within the company. And vice versa. Emails which contain sensitive information and formerly only got sent internally are going out on the live, insecure and slow internet.

VPNs and other hoop-jumping has to be set up just so people can work, and that’s before you start moving whole servers and applications outside the cosy confines of the corporate network.

And God help you if you want to set up an appointment with some busy people who are no longer viewable in your calendaring software.

Is it all worth it? Who am I to judge? Pah, what would us geeks know about it, anyway?