Society of Information Management: Two-thirds of U.S. tech firms send jobs offshore

U.S. IT companies send their jobs offshore and not going to cut IT budgets.

SIM’s (Society of Information Management) survey shows that offshoring has become so engrained in IT processes that 65% of businesses do it for some aspect of their business. SIM has published it’s annual survey of IT budgets and technology trends last week.

Based on data collected from CIOs and senior IT leaders at 275 companies, survey found that nearly a quarter of the companies using offshore services did so to run existing systems applications. And another 20% said they used offshore services to manage their infrastructure.

Society of Information Management (SIM)

The other good news for offshore IT service providers is that companies aren’t cutting IT budgets. Last year, 65% of the firms responding to this survey said their budgets would be equal or greater to the previous year. That increased to 83% this year, and 85% of the respondents said next year’s budgets would be equal or better than their current budgets.

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New Testimonial at SoftElegance’s website

RussianNY is the leading Russian-American web-portal in New-York. It’s a hybrid of social and business network since 1998 with up to 90 000 registered users. The new testimonial has came to SoftElegance website from Mikhail Dudalenko, V.P., RussianNY.com:

“SoftElegance was brought to the project when it was about to fail. The team of talented developers made a quick turnaround. We were inspired by their efficient, professional manner. In six month we had stable version and six month later the system went live. By partnering with SoftElegance we were able to be on time and on budget.”

We are really proud to collaborate with the RussianNY.com project, to use the latest technologies such as .NET Framework 4.0, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, and some additional frameworks and technologies. We are looking forward to keep long-term partnership and to help RussianNY to be the leading ethnic web-portal in the U.S.

IT outsourcing survey: 63 percent of buyers said their outsourcing initiatives had been very successful

According to a survey of 277 outsourcing buyers conducted by outsourcing analyst firm HfS Research and the London School of Economics, 63 percent of mid-market buyers said their outsourcing initiatives had been very successful at reducing costs compared to 44 percent of large companies.

HfS’s researcher talks to CIO magazine about recent survey on IT Outsourcing. The results of this collaboration is really interesting and useful not only for mid-size and big-size companies article “IT Outsourcing: What Big Companies Can Learn from Midsize Companies“.

HfS and CIO

The other stats are:

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Cabinet Office has published “Government ICT Offshoring (International Sourcing) Guidance”

This week U.K.’s Cabinet Office has published guidance to help Government procurers consider supplier proposals “Government ICT Offshoring (International Sourcing) Guidance”.

This guidance is aimed at Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Senior Information Risk Owners (SIROs), Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) and procurers in Government Departments and exchequer funded bodies, to help them consider supplier proposals which include offshore provision and which may offer value for money.

UK Cabinet Office logo

As offshore software development company SoftElegance attended in offshore collaboration with the U.K. Cabinet and Government organizations. “When considering supplier proposals which include offshore provision options should be considered within the wider context of existing policy including the Government ICT Strategy and Plan for Growth” guide says.

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How to manage risk in outsourced applications. Security in outsourcing contracting.

IBM and Rational Software talks a lot about outsourcing in general and especially about security in outsourcing software development projects . You could find the fresh information and new look to security in outsourcing contracting and subcontracting, risk management or code and data management products like Rational AppScan. There are also available white papers, video and audio podcasts.

Today we would like to review and highlight Ryan Berg‘s, IBM Senior Security Architect whitepaper called “Trust, but Verify. How to manage risk in outsourced applications”.

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Expectations in outsourcing

What companies expects from outsourcing development? Different companies and people has a different reasons when they consider to use outsourcing business model. However there are some common expectations that everyone has.

Outsourcing is cost effective. That is an expectation and one of the main reasons why outsourcing is so prominent and popular business model. But that is not sole what outsourcing buyer would like to find in the supplier’s company. There are some other skills that companies expects to see in the team. Some of the customers explicitly require such skills, but some of them just keeps it in mind. And here it possible to face with the misunderstanding. So choosing outsourcing partner ask yourself what do you expect from the outsourcing service provider.

Industry \ market knowledge. Most customers needs not just Senior .NET Developer, they needs for example .NET developer with knowledge of financial market. Financial industry is wide spread and it’s not so difficult to find developer who knows differences between covered and uncovered option. What if company works in Oil&Gas industry? Are the additional time, budget and place to wait while the team will learn basic industry information and will they?

Business process knowledge. This is little bit different from that team members should understand only customer’s market. In the software that should be developed could be rather complicated business process and dependencies. It could be additional benefit to have in the supplier’s team an expert who could understand all the processes and dependencies in customer’s company.

Is it possible to receive from supplier: “We don’t know about those modules, it’s too complicated” or get functionality which will broke some business process. Or better to have an answer like “Yes, and when we will implement this feature it will change modules A and B”?

Consulting. You would like to be sure that your supplier understand you, your business and your needs. What if your supplier could help to optimize or improve your business. Not as separate consulting company, just as a part of a project. Not mush outsourcing companies could do this. This could show the high-class of the outsourcing company.