The main obstacles that need to be addressed revolve around language and communication, expectations of contracted work, and cultural differences. For purposes of this discussion, I will focus on India as an outsource location for service sector firms.

India’s service sector employees are typically English speaking, college-educated, stable, and very technical, which makes for a great fit for U.S. based software or technology companies. India-based employees have proven a good fit for help desk and call center support for complicated software products. Additionally, the labor pool is large, available, and inexpensive by U.S. standards with India labor rates often 25% of the U.S. equivalent labor rate. This economic gap is closing, but for now the cost savings can be huge.

One exception to this success is the high turnover rate of women employees in India. This is related to the Indian culture where women live with their families until they are married and then they rarely work. Although this cultural characteristic is changing, it is still the norm.

One additional complication with women employees in India is time zone. The U.S. based firm work U.S. business hours, which is basically the middle-of-the-night in India. Indian families are uncomfortable with their daughters, wives, and mothers commuting during those hours.

Many U.S. based service sector firms have been reluctant to outsource. This is true because of a fear of the unfamiliar. This could be the perceived lack of control, cultural issues, fear of what customers will think, fear of the unknown, and the cost of starting up an outsourcing program.

Another reason that some service sector companies don’t consider outsourcing relates to loyalty to the American worker. This loyalty which may be admiral can be misplaced if the firm’s competition chooses to outsource and creates cost savings. This leaves little choice for the U.S. based service sector firms.

Yet, with these challenges the cost savings can be remarkable and the competitive pressure is increasing for the service sector firms. Offshore outsourcing can help U.S. based service sector firms be more competitive and profitable.

Dr. Joe Greco is Director for the Center for the Study of Emerging Markets (CSEM) located in Fullerton, California. As part of the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton, CSEM was established to promote the flow of global information and technology between the academic and business communities. In particular, CSEM studies offshore outsourcing and it economic and cultural impact on U.S. based emerging markets. You may contact Dr. Joe Greco at 714-278-4125 or csem@fullerton.edu or at http://www.thecsem.org

The argument proffered in favor of the captives is that if the volume of architectural design, CAD services, engineering design and documentation to be transferred to India, Philippines or any other potential AEC outsourcing hub support a viable business venture why give the business opportunity to some third party. There is also a parallel thinking afloat that captives, better called Shared Services Organizations (SSO), are actually not as efficient, cost or otherwise, as third party providers who are pure players.

Outsourcing models adopted by AEC firms are based on ease of operations at low costs. The rates offered by established well-staffed and equipped Architecture Engineering Outsourcing firms are in many cases 10-15% lower than the price at which the captives perform the task. This has prompted the parent organizations of the captives to seek competitive quotations from third-party vendors. Experience of SSOs in the US has been uncertain. ENR Top 30 AEC firm in the USA, for instance, set up a huge Design Support Center to centrally provide complete CAD documentation and drafting but sold off its facility after some years to a leading third party CAD Outsourcing firm HQ in Chicago and design operations in New Delhi, India, and started outsourcing all its design process needs from the third party supplier. Some of the reasons why the growth of SSO is stymied are governance issues, technology and best practices, investment, human resources, and transfer pricing.

The shift to third party vendors is due to considerable efforts needed to establish captives. The third-party vendor model for architectural and engineering outsourcing is ideal to hand-over repetitive tasks (like CAD drafting services, architectural documentation services, and, engineering design services) to vendors in the global AEC outsourcing domain who are experts in your non-core functions. Outsourcing to a third-party vendor is all about getting superior quality service at lower cost and minimum involvement in a company’s non-core but essential operations.

India has an edge over other outsourcing hubs. Reasons why AEC firms are opting for the third-party vendor model, especially in India, are due to recognized higher education system, technological edge, infrastructure with global standards, English as an advantage, India’s success as a BPO market. Satellier, based in Noida and Kolkata, in India, is a good example of a third-party vendor which caters to top 15 of the 30 leading AEC firms in the world providing innovative, end-to-end design support services for the architecture, engineering and construction industries.

The third-party vendor model is definitely where the market is moving. With the advantages of being able to delegate non-core functions and concentrate on value-addition AEC firms worldwide are opting for third-party vendor specializing in architectural and engineering design, drafting, CAD and Building Information Modeling services that suit their needs. Third-party outsourcing will deliver benefits to the company in the areas of focus, process optimization, and streamlined information processing and most of all cost savings. Captives have several challenges to face and only those who are able to source and sustain a minimum workforce of 300 professionals will be able to successfully run their offshore operations. AEC design services being a specialized highly technical knowledge service, AEC firms must carefully evaluate which model to adopt based on pros and cons of each.

What is VoIP?

This abbreviation means Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP technologies include different technologies that give us possibility to use IP networks for voice applications of various types. For example, it may be voice instant messaging, telephony, teleconferencing etc. Many software developers think that VoIP technologies have great future because it has different solutions almost in every level of IP network. It may be voice applications for specialized application, like Skype, which is one of the most popular VoIP software, or quality measures of the lowest levels that allow to run those applications in a smooth way.

There is also such utterance as VoIP billing. This is a new concept and its application will allow you to save a lot of money on paying of your telephone bills.

VoIP and its applications

As it was mentioned above VoIP technologies include different technologies that give us possibility to use IP networks for voice applications of various types. This applications may include the following: telephone services, desktop applications and phone systems of corporate type. At first, telephone services. This is a service that will allow you to save money on telephone billing, it was named VoIP billing.

The next applications is desktop applications. This service was named VoIP software. It will allow you to use different software from voice-chat which was loaded on your PC desktop to IP-based telecommunications networks, such as Mac, which are used in large corporations.

On the one hand, VoIP technologies is technology investment which will allow to develop a lot of streams that will make possible to get your own profit.

On the other hand, VoIP technologies will allow to simplify your corporate network and to make some improvements of telephony experience for users of network, this is a great advantage for enterprise network engineer.

For the home user, VoIP technologies is really great possibility to cut the charges on the old telephone bill.

Services based on VoIP

Many companies suggest voice calling services which are really cheap. This is realised with the help of your broadband connection. Some of the offer calling services even cheaper than $9.95 per month. This is allowed with the help of VoIP technologies. Providers of IP service over voice usually use the internet to transfer voice signals from their own networks up to the phone located at your home. That is why their bills are much more cheaper that bills of other companies, because VoIP telecommunication is not organised in that way like traditional telecommunication phone lines. What is expected for VoIP in the future?

One of the new VoIP technologies is cell-phones based on VoIP. It is almost ready for application. It will allow people to avoid interruption of communication driving your car, entering your office and then the signal will be transmitted to your laptop using Wi-Fi network. This type of technology is already existing but it is not widely used.

There are also a lot of different VoIP technologies which are not very widespread today. But it is expected the great future for them.

Victoria Malinovskaya, I work for US-based offshore outsourcing software development company, TechnoPark Corp. http://www.technoparkcorp.com

There are 6 elements of profitable software development business. The first is quality assurance. It is vitally important to have quality assurance for software development process. It is necessary to provide quality assurance of full-cycle for different projects. The experience of previous companies shows us that it is better to provide ISO 9000 principles of quality assurance, that will help you to follow the most important and the most demanding business principles and requirements. It will also help you to give almost 3-month warranty and solve any problems within 3-month term of software acceptance. You may also continue the warranty term and support the system for different terms of using.

The second element is requiremets analysis. It is also necessary to follow because requirements analysis is the element which is the second after quality assurance according to importance for business and it is basically not only for software development process. Understanding of your needs will help you to built successful system which will help you to make the business more efficient.

Latest technologies and the knowledge of it is the third element of efficient process. It will help you to find the individual approach for every client and, consequently, to find the best solution for them.

Extensive experience is also one of the most important parts of software development process. It would be better to have vast experience in different software development projects in various fields of activity.

Management is the fourth important element, because the success of the process depends on the successful management. It must include control of the progress, assignment of the work and resources, outworking of communication process between different groups, plan of your project, schedule, status reports and delivery etc.

The fifth element is the communication with the client. The connection between you and client will help you to understand the needs of the client, time frames and requirements. It would be better if you organic your feedback within one day term. It will also help you to show the progress of your project and to get some notes.

So, you can see that all five elements of successful software development process from quality assurance to communication have great importance for efficiency of your project. You may follow this parts or you may try to create your own rules of successful process that will help you to make the business. Anyway, it is necessary to have fixed scheme of project building, even if it has not Quality Assurance or Expert Management, but it helps you, use it to make software development process successful.

Victoria Malinovskaya, I work for US-based offshore outsourcing
software development company, TechnoPark Corp.
http://www.technoparkcorp.com

Currently, Pondicherry has already many units such as Lenovo, Acer, HP, HC and many others.

Recently, the government has withdrawn sops to set up new units and this led many multinational companies to shift their priorities to other places.

HCL Infosystems has now planned to launch its new unit in Uttaranchal. It is not only tax sops, but also the longer time to market to the north that makes Pondicherry, an undesirable place to set up new markets.

Currently, the PC market is growing 28-30% on an annual basis and is set to double in the future with five million units a year at present.

HP’s Pondicherry unit is in a state of disuse & the company is meeting the requirements from the Bangalore facility.

North Indian regions such as Uttaranchal, Himanchal Pradesh, the Northeast & J & K offer tax exemptions for new units these days. This has made these regions more attractive.

The initial investment for the whole project would be around $30 million and this would be hiked up further in several phases to a total of $100 million.

The new manufacturing facility by Motorola will extend up to 70acrees & in phase-I a 2.5-lakh sq. ft. facility will be ready for operations in January 2007.

The facility will be responsible for manufacturing a wide range of handsets including both GSM & CDMA.

It will also support production & assembly of Network base stations for products across Motorola’s Networks & Enterprise portfolio.

Canaan partners have roped in Alok Mittal from Barings private equity partners India. Alok Mittal is an IIT Delhi graduate who co-founded the online recruitment portal JobsAhead.com.

He said that the group would focus on technology & health care with a typical investment of $3-4 million. He also disclosed that the organization had a discussion with 50 companies & thereafter, short-listed about 10 companies till now.

Canaan is looking forward to an association with firms that have been engaged in development of new technologies for Internet & mobile telephony in conjunction with emerging market technologies.

The CEO & Chairman of IBM, Sam J Palmisano will run the showcase in the presence of president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Bharti group chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal & Karnataka Chief minister H D Kumaraswamy.

The event will be held at the palace grounds and termed as IBM Employee Town Hall with 8/10,000 employees, investors, analysts & guest & will be linked through a satellite to 6, 500 other Indian employees from various sites across the country.

IBM would be holding an analyst meet for the first time in Bangalore. IBM’s business in India has prospered by 61% in the first quarter of 2006 & this has made it the fastest growing geography for the company globally.

This new program is known as “Easy online payroll” and it is a part of a series of business applications that the bank has developed in its business 24/7 portfolio.

The president of global consumer & small business banking for the bank said that the customers were keen on availing products that would facilitate their business to run smoothly. He also said that the bank planned to introduce the payroll program, as this may be a complex area for the customers to carryout on their own.

The new payroll program will be free to small business customers who pay their employees by direct deposit with a bank of America account.

The program will also set up tax statements, perform with-holding calculations, link to accounting & bookkeeping software & would pay & file federal & most state payroll taxes electronically.

Online invoicing & electronic payment of vendors would also be a part of the bank’s business 24/7 portfolio.

RiTV is a solution that would deliver on-demand entertainment, Internet access & information services to its users. The service is currently being offered in association with Orbit Communications Company (OCC). The service is currently being commercially launched for the hospitality sector in the Middle East. Many trials have already been conducted for over several months, prior to its commercial launch.

OCC is a communications company based in Bahrain. OCC specialize in three business sectors namely, Pay TV broad casting services, broadband services & VOIP telephony.