As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the IT outsourcing industry is slowly expanding despite the downturn. Outsourcers continuously seem to be aware of the advantages of outsourcing. But what location do you choose once you have decided to move your IT development to a service provider? And how important is the location, or should you focus more on the service provider?

Outsourcing your IT development could be a hard decision. Very often during discussions with CxO’s, directors and business owners we conclude that despite the advantages they still don’t dare to do it. They are afraid of losing control. And this is something I fully understand. It’s like your kids growing up and then at once they decide to leave your house. But one thing is certain, eventually it will happen. So, why should you decide to outsource your IT? Below you will find 10 most common reasons.

This week’s post “The 10 Safest Places In The World For Outsourcing” by Bob Evans led to quite some discussion online. Or probably even more discussion was initiated by his last week’s post “The 10 Riskiest Locations In The World For Outsourcing”. The conclusion of both posts is that Poland is a safe have for outsourcing.

Computerworld UK published an article in April saying: “Outsourcing Not the Big Savings Firms Expect, Study Says”. Summarizing, the recession is pushing businesses to cut the cost of their software portfolios, but most companies overestimate the savings that offshoring can deliver, as presented by CIO.com. On the other hand I firmly believe it is possible to save costs if you follow the proper approach.

“The Shifting Geography of Offshoring” is the title of this year’s Global Services Location Index ™ by AT Kearney. And the title is self-explanatory. AT Kearney concluded that there are some dramatic changes in the attractiveness of offshore outsourcing locations. Especially a lot of Central  and Eastern European countries, among them Poland, dropped dramatically in the ranking. AT Kearney states that this is mainly due to the dramatic change in the conversion rates of the local currencies towards the US Dollar. Although I have always been a great fan of  yearly reports, this year I have some doubts. Especially because the currency rates are shifting quickly and like AT Kearney states this is less of an issue for Euro countries. This makes the conclusions of the report less applicable to European countries, and even worse, the index might not be valid any longer due to serious economic changes. 

Faced with economic crisis we all become more cost focused, whether we like it or not. It’s common knowledge that more and more companies are in for heavy cost cutting operations. On the other hand, we all know that we will have to invest as well. Without new developments there is no competitive advantage, which makes both today and the future insecure. Therefore, even today clever investments will be needed. So, what about investing for half the price? In this article I will describe three ways how you can decrease your software development cost up to 50% (or may be even more) without any loss of core functionalities.