I have been reading the book "24 days" - the story of how 2 WSJ reporters uncovered the issues at Enron. What struck me was how much Enron management had become enamored with "asset-lite" - more trading oriented businesses, compared to their traditional hard asset, capital intensive business - with encouragement from Wall Street.
I thought about that as I read this article which talks about a Katzenbach study which suggests that elaborate data centers US outsourcers have are now more of a albatross. This just when they are starting to sell "utility computing". And guess what - Wall Street loves the "asset-lite", well-run offshore companies rewarding some of them with valuations of 10X revenues.
One small difference. Many of the offshore firms do invest in a different kind of asset - real estate. In countries like India, those appreciate rapidly unlike computers in data centers.
