software outsourcing

Much hyped about cost benefits, offshore software development or offshore software outsourcing services offers customer oriented software solutions. An offshore software development has taken the center stage by successfully developing and implementing enterprise level applications. IT industry is growing 40% every year due to the tremendous increase in demand of offshore application development.

IT Outsourcing is the much talked about topic, and why not, this sector has been growing 20 – 30% every year globally.  India is recognized to be the best country equipped with high end IT outsourcing companies. Currently India is exporting IT services to almost 95 countries globally, being voted as the best and most preferred IT outsourcing destination worldwide. There are below reasons for the India being a super power in IT outsourcing services:

India has gained huge fame for its highly skilled human resource availability for servicing IT industry and meet outsourcing needs worldwide. By growing demand the Indian market has been flooded with small to mid size outsourcing companies offering offshore software development services. In this article I am going to share some tips which can help you to select a right offshore outsourcing company when you are planning for outsourcing to India.

An ideal offshore outsourcing company should be well equipped in terms of Infrastructure and qualified human resource. It is important to examine the employees skill set, but it is more important to make sure that the software company you choose must be a process driven company but not human dependant.

The accreditation like CMMi, ISO certificates, Microsoft competency certificates, etc. can acknowledge the company for following a well defined process which manage projects, maintain quality and deliver the work. While selecting an offshore software development company it is advisable to understand the Software Development Life Cycle adopted by that outsourcing company and how successfully it is been implemented in its previous work. You can also do a reference check with its present and past customers to get a feedback or testimonials on company performance.

An unavoidable step is to examine how well the company is maintaining Intellectual Property, proprietary software and new development specifications of its customers. It’s after sales support and risk management policies should be reviewed based on your project requirements.

The companies which can use its skilled resources follow well defined processes for software development and project management life cycles and maintain security for your project is the right offshore software development company to work with. These are some of the most important parameters which you can consider while examining a best suited service provider while outsourcing to India.

With rapid passage of time the very new concept of offshore outsourcing company has today become age old evolving from being old and weary to new and fresh. Initially short term projects came to offshore outsourcing company as it offered cost benefits but today it has become the norm to success through cost saving and out of the box services. Outsourcing services are no more related to only cost saving but have extended to offer greater benefits to clients.

Benefits of opting for offshore outsourcing company for your software development needs can be listed as below:

Maximum resource utilization: Internal resources of the offshore outsourcing company can be utilized in a manner so as to ensure skills of the resources are utilized to the maximum benefit of stakeholders in case offshore software development projects.

Cost: Almost all would be aware that reduction in cost of development is one of the biggest benefits offered by an offshore outsourcing company. Companies can reduce development costs by 30-50% by outsourcing them to offshore companies.

Focus: An offshore outsourcing company can help you focus better on your core business activities by managing other less important aspects of your business. It is estimated that executives in a company spend more time managing details then actually planning and working on plans. With offshore outsourcing company at your service you will be able to spend more time on planning and its implementation.

Advanced Technology: Offshore outsourcing company keeps itself abreast of latest technology and uses it while delivering various services. Clients automatically get the benefit of latest technology in all their projects without even worrying about which is the latest version and how it can be used in the software development project.

Time zone benefit: You can immensely benefit from the difference in the time zone where the offshore outsourcing company is located. For example if the company is located in India and you are in US then you can virtually have your operations open 24X7 all days of the week without requiring your employees to do overtime.

Take example of any successful business today and you will find that they are using some or other software outsourcing products. Most of the companies owe their success to the use of software to increased their productivity and accuracy at work, which ultimately results in less errors and loss due to mistakes. A common example of software outsourcing product used can be seen in oil and gas industries which use software application for the well analysis and mining survey.

Where can you find such a product? Most of the software developing companies provide services of software outsourcing which are catered to individually depending on the business requirement. If your business needs customized software you can contact them with your requirements. Here it should be remembered that a software outsourcing company cannot transform all concepts into finished products. Hence it is not that you will request and they will create a product for you.

In fact first a feasibility test is done where it is checked whether it is practically possible to create software as you desire. If the answer is yes then the software outsourcing company will proceed further to decide which technology will be used and exactly how the finished product will look, feel and work. If you are ok with the process description then the project is divided into small parts called milestones which are then assigned to each developer selected to work on the project.

Recent time has seen immense popularity in the use and demand of software outsourcing products. Almost all business units are using software to accomplish their tasks more accurately and in a timely manner. Software can be implemented to complete iterative tasks like billing in a mall or bottle counting and filling in factories fast and speedily. How much you pay a software outsourcing company will again depend on your project requirements.

The market for offshore software outsourcing to India in recent times is seeing an increase in the number of companies offering these services, clients to the company and the annual revenues of the companies providing offshore software outsourcing to India services. There are various factors which can be credited for the increased growth of the sector.

One of the prime reasons responsible for the growth of the offshore software outsourcing to India niche is the availability of skilled people. Today there are more people who have knowledge of various software development languages like PHP, Java, .Net, asp.net, Magento, Flex, Drupal, CMS, Jhoomla etc. Most of the people have studied all these courses in their college or from private institutions after college. The ranking process of the colleges and private institutions is tough and this helps in the proper grooming of software developers.

Many professional programmers have either set up their own companies or are working independently. Companies of course offer offshore software outsourcing to India services at competitive rates and have specialized skills which keep them better off than their competitors. Most of the companies hold records for being the best in the industry as they have never had any unsatisfied client. Companies are also a better choice because they work through contracts which describe the ethics of the company as well as bind both the company and clients.

Unlike other countries of the world majority of people involved in offshore software outsourcing to India niche are fluent with English hence there are less chances that clients will face problems in communication. Also they are open for communication at any time of the day or night irrespective of the time zone. Software like Skype makes it less expensive for both the parties to make virtual calls. Besides this online chats and emails have been there since years and have been known to facilitate communication between parties.

Many people are found to be skeptical of the abilities of an offshore software development company to develop the software as required. Your skeptical behavior can be because you cannot trust people from different countries to work on your software development project or you feel cheap labor is often risky when quality is in question.

Though you might have derived these conclusions on the basis of your experiences and whatever you have heard about offshore software development niche you are missing on the potential to get the best services at the lowest prices. We do not deny that there are spoofs in niche but if you have an eye for quality and some time to devote then you can find the best offshore software development company.

Offshore software development is cheaper only because of the economic conditions of the parent company and not because the software developers are less skilled and so need a lower pay. Employees with IT outsourcing companies working in software development are among very few people who are paid a very high salary.

But you find them to be cheap because of the currency conversion ratio. For example if you are paying $35/hr to a PHP developer with 5 years of experience in America then probably with the some money in India you will be able to hire 2 PHP developers with 5 or more years of experience.

To conclude this here are a few reasons which are sure to change your thoughts about offshore software development. The biggest benefit you are going to get is that the software will be developed in less time. More skilled people will be working on your project for the same price and lastly because of the time zones it is possible that if you offshore your work to a developer in a greater time zone region you can get your pending work done exactly the next day when you reach office.

A software development process is a structure imposed on the development of a software product. Process serves as the fundamental tool to the community to collaborate and build software. Truly, a methodological approach to software development results in fewer defects and, therefore, ultimately provides shorter delivery time and better value. Following a standard process model helps in delivering quality controlled and assured software products every time.

Computers have become a significant part of all our lives and have enhanced our existence in educational, professional and personal prospects. This shows that how software has evolved over the years from being just a tool to automate computing to a fully fledged complex structure to develop, test and maintain data-structure and documentation. Software is accurate, fast, and cost effective. These reasons tell why it has been playing such a tremendous role in the global markets.

Software Development life cycle faces a lot of challenges during each phase, the biggest challenge will be from where to start. Worst situations will be starting a project with new employees, who don’t have domain expertise, unproven technology and that too with a challenging deadline. Along with technical challenges any situation might hinder a software development plan and put management in a risky and terrible crisis, which not tackled well this situation might lead to – products overshooting both cost and time estimations but still ending-up in poor quality. They do not meet requirement specifications as defined by consumer and finally, lead to a business failure.

The basic challenges for software industry, which are most deserving of serious attention in the immediate future include to:

1. Create the new logic for problem solving based on open-ended programming environments for high performance computer systems
2. Develop a formal methodology that guides us toward the construction of correct and portable parallel programs, and adopt an openness to radical and innovative alternatives
3. Design a programming language that incorporates a unifying intuitive model of parallel computation, and which provides a coherent vehicle for the natural description of parallel programs
4. Devise and construct software tools that resonate with the methodology and facilitate a flexible, supportive environment
5. Introduce widely available, substantial educational opportunities in parallel programming that will create a pool of individuals with the experience and intuition necessary to work effectively in this setting.

Microsoft had introduced ASP.NET to the world of software development just a few years ago. It has great built in features, incredible performance level and Visual Studio the best IDE around. This was a rare combination most of the software developers around the world had been waiting for. No wonder it gained instant popularity. 

• ASP.NET can support more than 40 different software development languages. Hence a software developer gets the chance to use the language of his/her choice. However the most preferred languages used by developers are C# and VB.
• ASP.NET overcomes the limitation of its predecessor ASP. In ASP codes were interpreted before the requested page was shown like if a user requested a page the server would read the code on the page and try to find what the code meant and accordingly display pages. This would take longer for ASP to display results for the requested query. Alternatively in ASP.NET the server does not have to re read the code and interpret it to display the results. It has to do the process only once and the result automatically gets saved on the server. This was revolutionary for the software development world.
• All the functions related to .NET framework remain intact in ASP.NET. Hence it effortlessly supports web services, email, database interaction, XML and many similar technologies. This saves software developers time they would otherwise spend on reinventing the wheel.
• ASP.NET is extremely helpful when you are working as part of a software development team working in tune with the web development team because here you have the option to isolate the server side code from the HTML. Hence if in case the program needs modification it can be done so without affecting the HTML layout.

The latest trend in the in the software development industry is to create more and more interactive websites. Many web development companies are using the latest software applications to create amazingly rich internet applications. These applications breadth life into the website and make it look like a living entity.

Microsoft Silverlight is one such technology that helps in creation of Rich Internet Applications (RIA). The applications are cross browser and cross platform compatible and use .NET framework. The web world has become highly competitive and hence it important for online business owners to make their website highly interactive so that it engages the end users and provides them enthralling user experience

Microsoft Silverlight helps to add audio and video clip to the site. The multimedia experience is enhanced through elegant display of the animation, so that a website reacts and responds to the queries of the end users. This feature finds a great use in online networking sites, which are quite in demand on the net. 

Software development technology like Microsoft Silverlight makes it easy for the developers to design attractive shopping carts, with secured payment and shipping management gateways. This allows the website site owners to conduct their business online and allows the online shoppers to purchase the products or services of their choice, at a click of button from the comforts of the home of office. Silverlight is a completely programmable plug-in for a web browser, which allows the user to hear audio, watch video and animations, widely available on the internet. 

Silverlight uses XAML, text based language to display its content on the screen. This makes the content search engine friendly and allows them to easily index it. So the sites built by Microsoft Silverlight quickly show up on the search engine results. This means greater visibility on the net and this translates into increased traffic flow, which ultimately increases the popularity of the site. 

In the end it can be right said that Microsoft Silverlight software development technology greatly enhances the image of the website by integrating high interactive features into it and at same time optimizes it for the search engine. T This twin advantage increases the visibility of the site and thus improves its ROI.