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Take Java offshore

Should your organization outsource Java development overseas?

By Loren Siebert, JavaWorld.com, 07/20/01

From small Silicon Valley startups to the Fortune 100, many companies are discovering the benefits of outsourcing Java software development to offshore teams. Gone are the days when US firms outsourced only the tedious legacy systems maintenance to offshore companies. Indeed, US-based companies spent .5 billion on offshore outsourcing last year, an amount predicted to rise to 7.6 billion in 2005, according to research firm IDC. With the available and inexpensive talent pool of Java developers in countries like India, Russia, and Ireland, outsourcing new development efforts using the latest Java technologies can save companies time and money, and might be a great fit for your organization's next project.

While putting an offshore outsourcing plan into practice can be tricky, the basic concept is fairly simple: your organization articulates the business problem it wants to solve, while an offshore Java development team constructs the solution. This scheme imposes a greater degree of compartmentalization to the software process than what you might be used to, in that the offshore software engineers and the onsite business managers may never so much as send an email to one another. Instead, the majority of the communication funnels through the project managers on each side. This makes the software construction process much more analogous to that of building a house. For example, if you build a new house from the ground up, you would ordinarily deal with an architect, who would in turn deal with general contractors, who would then manage construction workers. If you suddenly wanted gold inlays in the countertops, you would not walk up to a carpenter at the construction site and order it done. If you think, "Well, I should be able to!", then outsourcing is probably not for you. Otherwise, read on.

Advantages

When considering outsourcing a Java project, managers naturally want to know how much it will cost and how long it will take relative to the traditional in-house approach. While it is tempting to sum up the potential benefits of outsourcing in terms of the dollars and man-months you will save, too many variables exist to make such a generalization meaningful. Instead, it pays to understand the variables themselves and then come to your own conclusion.

Yes, costs are low

Of course the factor that often draws the most attention is the low hourly billing rate for offshore engineers. While rates have increased dramatically in the last few years due to the explosive growth of the outsourcing industry, companies can still find excellent Java talent for 0 per hour, although prices up to 0 per hour are becoming more common. These numbers are dreamy compared to the lofty figures that even mediocre Silicon Valley engineers command in today's market, and the numbers get even better when you account for other employee costs such as sign-on bonuses, stock options, health-care overage, office space, equipment, and those hefty recruiter fees you pay just to get them on board. And hiring does not just cost money, it costs time, another crucial factor to consider when evaluating offshore Java development.

 

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