Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Software Outsourcing to India

Outsourcing software development has become a prominent business practice in which a company contracts all or part of its software projects to the outsourcers. Outsourcing software development has become one of the most critical topics & most widely implemented management tool for organizational change. The growing software market offers firms to recruit critical resources to develop quality software including skilled engineers to develop software efficient markets channel to distribute software, strong support from academic research centers & an active capital market to support risk. For this, India has become the largest software outsourcing hub. Currently software industry in India is estimated to be worth $1.2 billion US dollars. Many international companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, IT&T, Motorola, HP etc have chosen India as offshore outsourcing destination.

India enjoys the following advantages over some other nations which promote software outsourcing:

Cheap Development Cost: The development cost is relatively low. As compare to USA the overall development cost of the project in India is 50% less. This is because the difference between in the cost of living of developing & developed countries.

Highly trained & skilled personnel: India has the world's largest pool of scientific manpower. It has a growing number of more than 3.5 million tech personnel with more than 41000 IT graduated annually.

Quality: Various training programmers & certification processes ensure the quality of software personnel & services. Today many CMM level5 and ISO certified companies are located in cities of India.

State of art Technology: A survey shows more than 65% of Indian software companies use the state of the art technology in their software development process. It includes the use of Computer aided software engineering (CASE) & fourth generation Languages (4GLs) in Software development; adoption of graphical User Interface, OOP techniques etc. Acquiring high computing equipments is no longer a major obstacle for software project as the price of such equipment is going down dramatically. The declining cost of telecommunication facilities that can lower cost of delivering the programmers output to their clients around the world.

Establishing Partnership: The huge market opportunities in India are very attractive to foreign enterprises .One of the ways of stepping into the local market is to provide outsourcing projects to the local societies so that to establish a positive relationship for the further market development.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

IT Consulting Roads to Success

Before knowing what all efforts are required to be a successful IT consultant, you must know what is a consultant? A consultant is generally considered a guide & assistant to an organization .Consultant have special knowledge & skills which they use to provide advice, solutions, or assistance to clients. Usually consultants, work on a contract basis rather than as employees. This infers, too, that the service consultants give is of limited duration. And IT consulting is an area which helps the companies in choosing the best resources for achieving profitable results. Now the next step includes the ways that can guide you to roads of success.

The very important challenge to start IT consulting business involves how to plan & start an Independent Consulting business. You need to make a decision whether you want to go for part time consulting or permanent one. Once making the decision, set up an office & pick up the name with a quote that can attract the clients.

Second, How to perform Problem solving & business Services. This will include tasks like-How to make proposals, negotiate contracts & set fees. The first contract is very important for nay business & the company wants to give more than what is expected from it.

The other crucial step which joins hands with the above is how to market your Information technology business. For this you have to make contacts, use referrals, Distribute brochures & networking. Try to make news releases. The other important way to get publicity is through email marketing. Getting your name entered in directories is the other good option.

The very important point to be considered after you starts providing Information Technology Solutions to your clients is “how to stay on the top technically & professionally”. You have to seriously budget out your time for this. IT consulting is very hot in the market these days. Every other person is going for this business but to be at the top requires not only the hard work but it requires what is called smart work. Watch areas that can lead you to the top. Make a list of companies which provide the same IT services & It support as yours & watch out their success rates. To give the consulting companies a tough competition select the vendors carefully may at first you may not be able to earn enough profits but once your name is famous in the market you can easily get high profits.

Last but not the least is to manage a proper balance between the personal & professional life.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Search Engines and E-Business

Search engine is loose term for several types of software, typically owned & operated by companies other than internet service providers. Search engines include millions, even billions of pages in their databases which help the customers to get the information regarding millions of products, people, places and ideas. There are over 1000 search engines, & the number continues to grow, most popular ones being AltaVista (www.altavista.com ), Google (www.google.com ) & Yahoo (www.yahoo.com).

Technology, specifically the Internet & e-business, is instrumental in changing the way we do business. E-business is the integration of a company's business, including products procedures & services over the internet. One can turn a company from a brick and mortar business into an e-business when integrate the manufacturing, finance and HR functions with sales , marketing and customer reach through an e-commerce website. E-commerce Website is the online component of an e-business. Business leaders realize that in order to maintain their competitive edge a business should try the online market place.

Amazon is a great example of a successful online marketplace. It provides a variety of books at low costs which are not easily available in your friendly neighborhood book store. E-business is not only limited to shopping only. Today, we can get our tours organized by the leading touring companies on internet only. Cox & Kings is one of the international online travel website. Similarly, number of web design and development companies are rendering real estate website design services to cater to growing housing and commercial rental needs of people worldwide.

This is where search engine come in. Popular search engines like Google and Yahoo account for more than 60% of web search by all internet users. A search engine has millions of WebPages in its database, so how do you come above the rest of websites available. It is pertinent as users may not check out a website listed on 1000 rank