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More than half (53 percent) of companies plan to increase outsourcing spending in 2008, up from 38 percent in 2006 and 48 percent in 2007, according to a survey of 250 IT professionals by US-based outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) company Syntel.

Bharat Desai, chief executive of Syntel, said outsourcing is one industry that will not suffer from the crisis in the credit markets.

Desai said in a statement: “In a weak or uncertain economy, companies look for technology solutions that will increase productivity, efficiency and savings.”

The link between outsourcing and savings was reinforced by a separate study by BPO provider Sutherland Global Services, which found cost reduction and the ability to provide a variable cost model was in the top five reasons for outsourcing for more than 90 percent of businesses it questioned.

The study of BPO trends for 2007 surveyed major global companies in the insurance, banking, telecom, retail and banking industries. It found that tech support and customer care departments continue to be the most commonly outsourced divisions, standing at more than 60 percent and 40 percent respectively, and that India and the US are the most popular locations, chosen by about 70 percent and 60 percent of respondents.

Data and site security topped the list of what companies want from their outsourcers for 80 percent of businesses, with an understanding of process and industry experience close behind.

The money will be spent to strengthen the company’s software development center set up at Bangalore in January, as well as to expand sales and customer operations, company officials announced in India this week.

The Indian development and support center is designed to initially perform software maintenance and support activities for many of the company’s open software product offerings. Gradually it will be expanded to contribute to the development of a full range of EMC storage software products, the company said.

The data storage giant has been working hard to broaden its reputation as a viable provider of storage software. Its acquisition of Legato Systems, a maker of backup and recovery software, was a part of this strategy.

An EMC spokesperson said the center is part of the company’s development and support facilities that include R&D facilities in the United States; Cork, Ireland; Brussels, Belgium; and Kawasaki, Japan.

t is a well known fact that the offshore outsourcing (or any type of outsourcing for that matter) carries known and unknown risks. The important thing is to find out if your offshore outsourcing provider is aware of these risks and has a plan to either mitigate it or eliminate it altogether. In this post, I will share some of known risks related to offshore outsourcing. Risk One: Requirement Misunderstanding - Many times it happens that the requirements get written in a hurry to get the project started as soon as possible.

This is okay if the project is being done inhouse. However if it being outsourced, it becomes a risk. If the specifications are not written properly or are incomplete or enough details are not provided, the project will have problems on various fronts such as Project Understanding - what needs to be done and delivered, Project Planning - putting together firm dates for delivery, Change Controls - lots of change control will be generated later on in the project life cycle, which could obviously delay the project as well as increase the cost.

Per the study conducted by Software Development Engineering Institute, not enough understanding or the clarity around the customer requirements is one of the top reasons on why software projects fail or get delayed. In order to mitigate this risk, make sure that your provider has gone through the requirement understanding phase before starting the coding phase.

The requirement understanding phase should have multiple rounds of discussion with all the involved parties to fully understand and document their requirements in the Software Specification Documents. This phase is independent of technology selected for the project. The provider should also prepare the HTML mock-ups which is an excellent way to capture the application flow.

These mock-ups should reused during the coding phase for embedding the application method calls. Requirements Development: The Requirements Development phase is about gathering the needs of the customer and translate into requirements specification of what the system must do. Requirements Development consists of three related activities:

1. Gathering User Requirements, which is accomplished by interviewing the potential users about the system they want, building the interactive prototypes, writing the Requirement Specification documents.

2. Analyzing Requirements, which is about determining the acceptability, implement ability, and testability.

3. Inspecting Requirements, which is accomplished by discussing the proposed requirement in detail. The goal is to identify the issues and errors related to the requirements ambiguities or discrepancies.

The deliverable from this phase is a detailed requirments document which should get jointly reviewed and signed off. Your company’s project manager or designated contact will need to review the status of any deliverables as well as any testing done, and be available to communicate frequently with the vendor project manager.

Most project problems occur to infrequent or poor communication between the firm outsourcing, and the vendor. But the “no news is good news” approach is rarely true; in fact, the opposite will often occur. One of the easiest ways to reduce this risk, and to catch problems early on, is to initiate frequent communication, with regular times specified for project reviews.

Differences in development methodology can occur, if one firm prefers an RUP approach with exacting specifications, while another firm prefers agile methodologies. One firm may have a preferred tool in place for source code control, or for coding standards, or for testing builds. These issues can often be worked out by communicating the reason for each approach, and then choosing a consistent methodology.

Most frequently, you will ask the offshore team to adopt your in-house methodologies, but you may be surprised to discover that they have methodologies or tools that equal yours, especially if they have significant experience in a technology. This is where teamwork, and communication between the project and development team managers is critical.

Related to methodologies are evaluating how the firm being outsourced to handles sudden requests for large volumes or rapid delivery. Check on how flexible and scalable your vendor is, and whether they have processes in place for hiring additional staff as required for larger projects.

This includes having sufficient project management staff in place to ensure adequate monitoring and communication with your firm. Ask them: “What is the smallest project you have worked on? The largest project?” to help determine whether they can scale to meet your needs. You will also want to check references for projects that are similar to yours.

Original source was found at http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=122707_offshore_outsourcing.htm

The European market of IT services is challenged by powerful competition pressure, but observers predict the growth in outsourcing sector. Using outsourcing services not only in the billion-dollar projects of international business, but by middle and even small enterprises proves advantages of such functions delegation.

Low-cost expenses allow to imitate and to conduct possible economic decisions in real time mode when plenty of participants are involved. In consequence the accuracy of made decisions rises and also co-ordination of participants’ activity in the process of the accepted decisions realization is improved. Opportunities extension and quality increase of works co-ordination for different collectives change the structure of internal expenses. It is cheaper to pass on work execution to temporaries or external companies, then to hold regular employees for this purpose.

Outsourcing9.com - IT portal devoted to outsourcing services that helps offshore software companies and international clients in searching information about development resources. Primary objective of this site is to provide assistance for people interested in IT outsourcing of software development. In addition the portal intends to be an educational source for those, who are new in IT outsourcing.

Our large experience in combination with understanding of bases of functioning and support of difficult applications, and also deep specialization in new technologies allows to prolong life of existent applications and gives new possibilities of development your IT systems.

Mentioning computer software in Jamaica, we probably mean market-leading Microsoft and not those developed by local companies.

But that shouldn’t be the case, maintains Glen Gill, head of local company Info Group, which has sold its software abroad and is part of a local community of developers sponsored by Microsoft.
Info Group is one of several Information Communication Technology (ICT) companies based at the University of Technology (UTech) Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) business incubator. TIC this year awarded Info Group its annual Innovation Award for software providing a range of solutions from organising bauxite production to tracking the treatment of sickle cell patients.

The tide may be turning believes Gill, suggesting that a recent business inquiry he received from the United States could have been influenced by the strong performance of a team of student software developers from Northern Caribbean University (NCU) who placed a creditable third at the worldwide annual Microsoft-sponsored Cup competition.

“Think of what happened with this Imagine Cup team,” Gill told the Business Observer. “The Microsoft guy from Puerto Rico was telling us that the entire region was shocked that a team from Jamaica came third and it made people start to look up and realise there are people who can do software development and is helping to change people’s perception,” he said.

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Automation, speed, and perfection, these are certain aspects that defines the superiority of software development today. With increasing competition and demand of effectiveness, software development processes are getting more sophisticated with the combination of proven old and swift advance technologies. Competition arises because of perfection and better services among companies and service providers. And in order to stay class apart and favorite to their customers, more and more companies are thinking of outsourcing software development meeting closely what their business requires. There is no doubt that outsourcing is enjoyed to be today’s most prevalent and competitive trend of bringing this professional business world class quality with a timely delivery at affordable prices. Furthermore, customer concerns in B2B and B2C’s has contributed more to offshore outsourcing. Some of the ultimate benefits of outsourcing given here can definitely boost up your belief in outsourcing.

* First rate professional skills and expertise is given more emphasis in order to meet exactly the process centric requirements of business.

* Apart from process centric approach, product delivery is done through customer-centric approach.

* Access to an offshore development center equipped with advanced infrastructure along with a dedicated offshore team

* Internet promotion and advertisement together with SEO services is also provided by some of custom software development companies

* Latest and innovative techniques are employed in order to develop feature-rich and effective software

Apart from endless benefits, cost factor enjoys to be the foremost and preferred reason for the popularity of software development outsourcing. Start up companies prefers to invest least amount of money as they have to set up many things at their infancy to grow up. Thus, outsourcing clicks them at the first moment. It will not only help them grow financially while saving money through outsourcing but also give access to modern infrastructure and skilled manpower.

Destination India today is the most preferred outsourcing country among all. It is not just because of the competitive prices but also top quality custom software development. Superior quality, affordable prices, assured winning results, what else a company needs to stand out in the market. Credited to these benefits, offshore outsourcing is proving outstandingly money-spinning for companies that are making use of it.

Freedom is another important and lucrative factor that attracts companies to outsource custom software development. While a start up company outsources its projects, it gets a great deal of freedom in getting completed projects, giving specifications and discussing with offshore team. You need not to worry about directing your work force as per number and variety of tasks you carry in hand. But outsourcing has made not only made it easy but realistic too. You can access an excellent and experienced team for a particular task because you can’t be perfect and proficient in all the areas. Outsourcing helps you to come out of this handicapped feeling. You just need to get a hold of a dependable software development company and simply outsource what you are not perfect at. Be it web page design, software development, ecommerce solution, or web application development, you can delegate your projects to a reliable outsourcing company without any worries in mind. The endless benefits of software development outsourcing are clear and loud to everyone today as the entire business world is taking its advantage. Then what you are waiting for? Be a part of it and stand out!

Source http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=620146