Rural Outsourcing, a startup, was founded by Kathy White, former CIO for Cardinal Health, who says If we can outsource to India, we can outsource to Arkansas. Rural Sourcing is an application development provider with interests in such towns as Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Greenville, North Carolina. White has set out to leaves leveraged the potential of a base of people who are unemployed and wants to help prevent the elimination of an entire profession in the U.S. Many labor advocates, such as Alliance@IBM and the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, say the practice of sending computer programming and service jobs to low-cost countries such as India and China has resulted in too many unemployed American IT workers. White promotes quality of life and low cost of living in the U.S. to applicants and executives. White, who helped Cardinal benefit from a internship program arranged with the Arkansas State University, says the students gained practical experience and served as a farm system for the healthcare company's IT department. Rural Sourcing has 35 staff, but that number is expected to double soon when the Greenville facility is available and its customer list lengthens. Rural Sourcing's business plan offers customers low-cost benefits not unlike those of offshoring, but keeps the work in the U.S. Among skeptics is Frances Karamouzis, analyst for market research company Gartner, who says They could get work on a project-by-project basis, but I think they would have a hard time getting beyond that. However, says Karamouzis, Rural Sourcing's Buy America movement could attract some customers.