Offshore Software Development: Who Is Complaining About Outsourcing?
Posted by: Nora Bieberstein in Outsourcing on Mar 14, 2011
Connotations with the term IT offshore outsourcing are often entirely negative. From poor-quality services over cheap labor exploitation to downsizing, outsourcing is connected to many evils. This article highlights that no matter if offshore software development, business process or call-center outsourcing, in times when the global economy is only slowly recovering and financial pressures keep the budget belts tight, the negative image of outsourcing is projected to change. If you are interested in engaging in offshore software development with a trusted partner, please contact Miracle Technologies!
Some consider it as one out of many business strategies that help companies to stay competitive in an open form of global market capitalism. Others regard IT outsourcing as evil practice that leads to job-loss, poor-quality services and cultural misunderstandings.
What is exactly to criticize about the practice of IT outsourcing? IT outsourcing means to hire an external offshore software development service provider, for instance, to accomplish a certain amount of service-related work in a certain time-frame.
Basically even hiring a tax lawyer who files the taxes for a company is outsourcing in a basic sense. So what is so wrong with using someone else’s expertise in the field of offshore software development, business processes or finance and accounting and paying him for it in return?
One reason why some critics regard outsourcing as the axis of all economic evil is that not only skills but money plays a big role in outsourcing. Thus, offshore software development is based on the assumption that service development needs to be outsourced mainly because it can be conducted for half the price in regions of the world where wage-standards and resources only cost half compared to home.
Critics argue that this shifts high-end jobs away from the departure countries to the service provider country. But first of all, not all outsourcing engagements lead to downsizing in-house; and secondly, in order to stay competitive and survive on rough, global markets, companies often decide to outsource as a growth booster. This strategic decision often helps to maintain company growth and jobs in the departure country.
In a nutshell, globalization leads to the opening of many markets that have been closed before and a conclusively wider competition in the economic sphere. In this, fair and smart outsourcing engagements for example for offshore software development serve as a business saving strategy.
