In short, no.  

In May I wrote about Infosys’ visa woes. Yesterday, an Alabama judge ruled in favor of Infosys in the first of the visa-related whistleblower lawsuits. It is important to note that this lawsuit was not about whether or not Infosys violated any visa laws, it was about whether Infosys retaliated against the plaintiff, Jay Palmer, for reporting visa misuse to executives at Infosys. The judge, Myron H. Thompson, allowed that although Palmer claimed he was mistreated and abused when he filed the internal whistleblower claim, because Palmer was an at-will employee, he, under Alabama law, has very few employee rights. In his decision, the judge referred to an Alabama Supreme Court decision that found, "Absent a contract providing otherwise, an employee may be demoted, denied a promotion, or otherwise adversely treated for any reason, good or bad, or even for no reason at all."

He went on to say, "Without question, the alleged electronic and telephonic threats are deeply troubling. Indeed, an argument could be made that such threats against whistleblowers, in particular, should be illegal. The issue before the court, however, is not whether Alabama should make these alleged wrongs actionable, but whether they are, in fact, illegal under state law. This court cannot rewrite state law."  

In November 2011, Atos and Yonyou (formerly Ufida) announced the creation of a joint venture dubbed Yunano™ aimed at the European SMB market. The two companies are at it again, this time focusing specifically on the Chinese domestic market.  I recently met with Herbie Leung, CEO of Atos in Asia Pacific, to discuss the partnership and future market opportunities in China. This new agreement essentially covers three areas of collaboration:

• Bringing PLM and MES expertise to Yonyou customers. With more than 1.5 million customers, Yonyou is one of the largest software providers in China with strengths in ERP and CRM solutions. However, the company lacks capabilities in adjacent areas like product lifecycle management (PLM) and manufacturing execution systems (MES). Following the SIS acquisition, Atos has significantly strengthened its capabilities in these domains and will offer them to Yonyou clients.
• Helping Yonyou’s customers migrate to private cloud architectures. The lack of private cloud technical skills in China led Yonyou to leverage Atos’s expertise to develop private cloud assessment workshops and ERP migration services targeting the China market. Atos will in turn leverage Canopy, a company it recently created in partnership with EMC and VMware to provide cloud solutions to its clients globally.
• Helping Yonyou expand into new markets in Asia. Like many Chinese companies, Yonyou has global aspirations.While theYunano joint venture focuses on bringing Yonyou’s ERP solutions to the mid-market in EMEA, the new partnership will leverage Atos go-to-market capabilities to take the Yonyou solutions to other markets in Asia.