Editor’s Note: Do We Really Seem Like a TMZ-Type of News Organization?

Exposing a Key Error in our Reporting on the Cemex-IBM Deal

When we published our exclusive report about IBM winning a massive, multi-year contract with Cemex, we knew we must have hit a nerve when I received a note from an angry reader saying that Nearshore Americas had become the “TMZ” of outsourcing business journalism. (For those not hooked on cable TV, TMZ is the celebrity muckraking TV show that is often the first to expose tawdry and seemingly meaningless details about famous peoples’ lives.)

The fact is the Cemex-IBM deal was big news to us and that’s why we seized on the story starting several months ago when we first got wind of Cemex sending out a request for proposal to a number of tier one vendors.

In our pursuit of the story and our subsequent news-breaking report, we got most things right, but one notable error was reporting that Neoris was going to be part of the billion-dollar IBM deal. In fact, as noted in our follow up report by Luke Bujarski, Neoris will remain a subsidiary of Cemex and will not be absorbed by IBM. We own up to this error.

For many Neoris employees, including the hundreds if not thousands who read our original report, the fact that Cemex will keep the IT services firm it created, has to be absorbed cautiously. Cemex is still under a great deal of financial pressure, and the thought of unloading Neoris may continue to be an appealing option for those watching over the financial health of the Mexican cement giant.

Nonetheless, we know for a fact that Cemex Chairman and CEO Lorenzo H. Zambrano has a deep affection for Neoris – and clearly the stakes are not so dire that the firm must unload the company.

Meanwhile, the level of involvement Neoris will retain in application support and maintenance for its parent company remains one of the many mysteries as IBM begins its system-wide IT and back office transformation.

For our part, we will continue to strive to be aggressively reporting on important developments in the Latin America outsourcing sector, even if we may ruffle feathers from time to time.

Of course we don’t have the glamor or the huge staff that TMZ has, but to be honest – I laughed out loud when I read the TMZ comparison. What this industry needs is more, not less, exposure.