Offshore development services in India: The ultimate guide

The software industry has become unbelievably saturated, with some suggesting there will be over a million different software companies worldwide in less than ten years.

Since most of these businesses are tightly packed into Western Europe and North American cities, competition is fierce, and the cost of doing business is always climbing. Almost inevitably, offshore development services (or simply ‘offshoring’) have become a solution for Western companies looking to build custom software.

What are offshore development services?

There are many common misconceptions about offshore software development. In the software world, offshoring is where a company builds a dedicated team of developers and opens a new office, all in another country. They are regular employees in every sense except that instead of working locally, they’re based elsewhere.

These are called offshore software development centres, and there are many reasons a company might choose to establish one. Some of them include the following:

Operating costs: Building teams in Eastern Europe or India is less expensive than in Paris, London, or New York. Premises, equipment, and salaries are all lower thanks to the more affordable cost of living.

Scarcity of talent: Across Western Europe and America, highly-qualified software engineers can take a lot of work to nail down. Tech economies like Bangalore produce more world-class IT engineers than anywhere on the planet.

Limited expansion: Quickly scaling-up business can be difficult. Going offshore lets businesses purchase larger offices, develop more dynamically, and not worry about finding adequate staff.

This has made tech hubs like Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley of Asia” goldmines where you can recruit the best engineers for software development. For instance, IT giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft and SAP have all established R&D centres in Bangalore! And they all got help from an offshore development services partner at the very beginning.

How are offshore development services different from outsourcing?

A dedicated development team is an extension of your business, so unlike outsourcing, where the engineers are juggling multiple clients and projects, the developers in your team are genuine, full-time employees of your organisation. It’s very different to outsourcing and more suitable for long-term goals aligned with your business’s mission rather than short-term, project-based work.

Offshoring used to be about finding unobtainable prices at home; now, it’s about finding the right talent for your business objectives. A dedicated team is a strategic asset that allows you to grow with highly talented developers from tech hubs like Bangalore. At the same time, your competitors are left fighting for scraps at home.

Of course, this doesn’t mean outsourcing can never be a suitable option. On the contrary, an outsourced project team may be ideal if you’re looking to build an app that requires minimal maintenance and no successive iterations. But, if that application is set to be the bedrock of your customer offering, a dedicated team would be much more appropriate. It all depends on your strategic objectives and business requirements.

If you’re interested in a detailed breakdown, you can check out this article on outsourcing vs offshoring but to put it simply, these are fundamentally different approaches to business.

Outsourcing vendors typically hire developers on an ad-hoc basis for sporadic projects. But these developers do not work for you: they cater to different clients and different projects. Since the main driver for outsourcing is cost, companies push hard for the lowest price possible. The end result is almost always below expectations since the developer has no real investment or incentive to do a good job.

An offshore software development team has full-time employees that get a good wage and are committed to your brand. As long as you work with the right offshore development services partner, offshoring allows you to produce software exactly how you do at home — except it’s cheaper and quite possibly to a higher standard.

How does an offshore team work?

There really are a lot of offshore development myths that surround the practice but they can easily be debunked. And while there’s a litany of offshoring terms you should learn if you want to become an expert on the model, however the concept is really quite simple.

Establishing your new team all starts with choosing the best offshore development partner. This is the local company that collaborates with you to create the best-fitting team for your business.

Through in-depth meetings and regular contact, your partner will build an understanding of exactly what you need. They then coordinate the recruitment, payroll and taxation, local registration and legalities, acquiring premises to build the offshore development centre, and other administrative tasks. Naturally, you would have the final say over any major appointments or decisions; as we keep saying, this is all still your business.

Learn more about offshore development services

Source: https://thescalers.com/guide-offshore-development-services-india/