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?

You need to provide a new managed-services model if you want to satisfy your customers. IT offshoring companies require innovative actions if they strive for maintaining the competitive edge. The long term price focused outsourcing contracts are definitely over.

Yesterday IT News published that the business process outsourcing market is set to undergo more consolidation among the mid-sized tier-two providers. But this is not applicable to the BPO market alone. About a year ago, at the Baltic Innovation Forum in Gdansk Indian and Eastern European IT providers already came to similar conclusions. No longer can we divide the world into us and them. Cooperation will be needed to become successful.

Before the downturn, outsourcing was becoming more and more popular mainly thanks to unrestricted access to resources and knowledge of specific domains. Partial reduction of incurred costs was another reason for it and it turned out to be the main reason during the downturn. Nowadays, outsourcing seems to start increasing again. Considering your IT outsourcing providers as a business partners could additionally speed up your recovery once the market starts growing again.

Nothing in life is black or white. This is applicable to outsourcing as well. Next to the advantages I described before, you have to face concerns as well. But should these risks be considered as serious disadvantages, as blockers for outsourcing or as a warning? Can we do something to turn them into pros?

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.

The economic crisis hit hard, rather unexpectedly and affected most the whole world. It’s logical that people start looking for who’s to blame. For sure things need to change. On the other hand, I get the feeling that people also over exaggerate. They become too short-sighted. In the past months in both the US and Canada one can notice all kind of campaigns and social network claims that have been sent to prevent jobs being transferred offshore. During the past fat years, when their economy was profiting from offshoring, nobody was complaining. Can you just turn back time?

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.

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.